I came across an article on the BBC News site yesterday with a headline of “Audi and Amazon to try car boot delivery service“. In summary it seems that Audi, Amazon and DHL are proposing a system where you can get your parcel delivered to the boot of your car, using a one-time access code.
Sounds great right? Parcel delivered wherever you happen to be, so if you are out and about, it doesn’t matter. No more “we called buy you were out” cards through your door!
Except, thinking about this led me to a couple of interesting questions – interesting for me, maybe crucial to you if you own a recent Audi. To distill the project into it’s simplest technology requirements for “Audi’s in-car communications system, Connect”, it appears that Audi have the technology to do the following:
- Track your car and provide those details to a third party.
- Remotely unlock your boot (and presumably other doors?).
- Provide a code to a third party to do the same.
Now, where “third party” is DHL, it may all seem OK, but replace DHL with random stranger, or worse still, random hacker on the Internet.
Bear in mind that in-car security does not have a great reputation, and the more technologically advanced it gets, the more problems seem to occur.
I wonder what the requirements on liability insurance will be for the companies involved.