Haunting tales from the unencrypted VW data

An electric car being manufactured at VW’s plant in Zwickau, eastern Germany. Picture: AFP

Drive an Audi, Seat, Skoda or Volkswagen and been up to funny business? Then you’re in deep doo-doo.

Our friends (freunde) at Germany’s best-selling news mag, Der Spiegel (The Mirror), have explosively revealed that leaked data has shown the precise locations of about 800,000 VW electric vehicles.

“A data volume of several terabytes on around 800,000 electric cars was largely unprotected and accessible for months in an Amazon cloud storage system. Vehicles in Germany, Europe and other parts of the world are affected. And so are many of their owners,” Der Spiegel tells us.

“For instance, blackmailers could have targeted those vehicle owners who regularly drive to the parking lot of the large Berlin brothel Artemis, a prison, the Kensi (Berlin branch) or a drug addiction clinic. Stalkers and jealous ex-partners could have seen where someone was staying and when. Since the movements of vehicles in Ukraine and Israel were also traceable, the data could even have been of military interest!”

Take our reader poll to see if you are at risk:

• Why do you drive an electric car?

1. Because I am a disgrace to my family, my country and the whole human race.

2. Because I want everyone in Canberra to know I want to save the world.

3. To avoid the awkward silence that ensues when someone asks, “What kind of car do you drive?”

• What’s the inside of Artemis like?

1. How did you know I was there?

2. I lent my VW to my mother.

3. I was checking it out for a friend.

• Do pensioners and taxi drivers pay only €50 entrance on Sunday and Monday?

1. Yes.

2. I don’t know but they took my senior’s card.

3. I am not a pensioner or taxi driver even though I pretended to be.

• Do groups of 10+ people get the 11th entry for free?

1. I don’t know, I could only fit four people in the VW.

2. I saw a cricket team there, so I suppose yes.

3. Call me No.11.

This motoring column’s primary responsibility is acknowledging our mistakes quickly and transparently when we get caught out. So, yes, in response to your emails, texts, faxes and telexes, I was out by one or two years on actor Steve McQueen’s war service. I have gone to the King of Cool’s biographic bible, Steve McQueen by Marc Eliot, for the facts.

Marc tells me that at 16, Steve moved to New York’s Greenwich Village with his mother, Julian. Quickly he met two old merchant mariners in a bar. Even though he was underage for any form of navy by a year (let alone drinking in a bar), they convinced him to join the US Merchant Marine.

At his first stop in the Dominican Republic, he quickly abandoned ship and started working as a towel boy in a brothel where he was encouraged to make use of the staff benefits.

After leaving the Santo Domingo branch of the Artemis Steve worked various jobs until 1947, when he joined the US Marine Corps. Although McQueen completed basic training at Parris Island, South Carolina, his track record with authority caused him to be demoted to private at least seven times.

“The only way I could have been made corporal was if all the other privates in the marines dropped dead,” Steve says.

Later on, his unit was performing a training exercise in the Arctic that turned disastrous. The ship McQueen, his unit and their tanks had boarded hit a sandbank, throwing several tanks and their crews into the water. Many drowned immediately, unable to get out of their tanks, but McQueen jumped in and saved the lives of five men.

Eventually he was assigned to the honour guard and was tasked with protecting the USS Williamsburg, the presidential yacht for Harry S. Truman. He also worked as a tank driver and mechanic. He was honourably discharged in 1950.

For a closer take on Steve and the movie that nearly destroyed him, Le Mans, let’s hear from Don Nunley who wrote the book Steve McQueen: Le Mans in the Rearview Mirror. “Steve dreamed of making this movie for more than a decade and had invested his heart and soul into making it a reality. He was partying pretty hard every night, using cocaine and marijuana. He drove too fast down winding French roads and wrecked a Porsche 911. Then he crashed a Peugeot, sending his beautiful Swiss co-star Louise Edlind through the windscreen. It’s amazing she wasn’t killed, escaping with cuts and bruises.

“He planned to drive in the actual Le Mans race, he thought he could win. Steve was a great race driver. He’d come second in a major race shortly before Le Mans. But just two days before filming was to start, the film’s insurance company said Steve couldn’t drive in the race. Somebody had died in the previous year’s Le Mans and the insurers felt it was just too dangerous to risk the star of the film.

“Steve was devastated. He suffered a mid-life crisis, plunged into numerous affairs, did way too many drugs, his marriage collapsed and the film collapsed around him.” As Eliot writes: “The film died a quick and merciful death”. Not so merciful for pro Ferrari driver David Piper who crashed a 917 and lost his leg during filming.

Talking of celebrity gossip, we spotted Oscar Piastri in the Cricket Australia box watching the Indians go down to Australia last week. He reportedly said: “Compared to F1, cricket is a bit slow.”

Next week we’ll be resuming normal transmission with bad car industry stories. But here are cars we drove in 2024 that we paid for, or friends stupidly lent us that we liked and would recommend: The Skoda Kodiaq 4x4, the Ferrari 296 GTB, the Ford Wildtrak, the wonderful Mazda MX-5, any Lexus except the GX or LX and if you live in the area buy them from Brad Worthington’s Lexus of Central Coast, our 2024 dealer of the year (only awarded twice before to Andrew Miedecke of the Miedecke Motor Group and David Dye’s Perth Euro) and we were going to recommend the Volkswagen Touareg but ours has just started having persistent electrical issues.

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