If VanMoof eBikes Locks You Out of Your Own Bike, a Rival Company's App Could Help (9to5mac.com) 64
VanMoof ebikes is currently "exploring all possible routes out of its debt" after rumors of a pending bankruptcy. But the blog 9to5Mac highlights another concern.
"If the company goes under, and the servers go offline, that could leave ebike owners unable to even unlock their bikes." While unlocking is activated by Bluetooth when your phone comes into range of the bike, it relies on a rolling key code — and that function in turn relies on access to a VanMoof server. If the company goes bust, then no server, no key code generation, no unlock.
A rival ebike company, Belgian company Cowboy, has stepped in to offer a solution. TNW reports that it has created an app which allows VanMoof owners to generate and save their own digital key, which can be used in place of one created by a VanMoof server. If you have a VanMoof bike, grab the app now, as it requires an initial connection to the VanMoof server to fetch your current keycode.
"We don't capture any data," explains the app's page in the Apple store. "Everything is saved securely on your phone so you can have a direct connexion to your bike if VanMoof services are down. Just generate your local key and enjoy peace of mind again." (They add that the app was developed during a one-day hackathon, "as we share the belief that every single bike deserves to be on the road.")
But 9to5Mac also suggests a longer-term solution. "Perhaps there should be a legal requirement for essential software to be automatically open-sourced in the event of bankruptcy, so that there would be the option of techier owners banding together to host and maintain the server-side code?"
"If the company goes under, and the servers go offline, that could leave ebike owners unable to even unlock their bikes." While unlocking is activated by Bluetooth when your phone comes into range of the bike, it relies on a rolling key code — and that function in turn relies on access to a VanMoof server. If the company goes bust, then no server, no key code generation, no unlock.
A rival ebike company, Belgian company Cowboy, has stepped in to offer a solution. TNW reports that it has created an app which allows VanMoof owners to generate and save their own digital key, which can be used in place of one created by a VanMoof server. If you have a VanMoof bike, grab the app now, as it requires an initial connection to the VanMoof server to fetch your current keycode.
"We don't capture any data," explains the app's page in the Apple store. "Everything is saved securely on your phone so you can have a direct connexion to your bike if VanMoof services are down. Just generate your local key and enjoy peace of mind again." (They add that the app was developed during a one-day hackathon, "as we share the belief that every single bike deserves to be on the road.")
But 9to5Mac also suggests a longer-term solution. "Perhaps there should be a legal requirement for essential software to be automatically open-sourced in the event of bankruptcy, so that there would be the option of techier owners banding together to host and maintain the server-side code?"
Who buys this shit? (Score:2, Funny)
Same retards who ran out of toilet paper in '20?
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Well, where I come from we refer to them as 'cum gurglers'. Your results may vary.
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Same retards who ran out of toilet paper in '20?
You're pretty dignified for someone who didn't know about this issue and wouldn't have researched the technical details yourself until 20 minutes ago.
Re: Who buys this shit? (Score:2)
I would have stopped at "needs internet."
A bike doesn't need internet. If one does, it's more scam than bike. Same for car, refrigerator, lawnmower, or thermostat.
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I would have stopped at "needs internet."
And you would have purchased a VanMoof then. Because no where in their advertisement or specs did it ever say "needs internet".
Again, you're looking pretty dignified for someone who was completely ignorant about this this morning.
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And you would have purchased a VanMoof then. Because no where in their advertisement or specs did it ever say "needs internet".
If you care to make sure the item doesn't have that requirement, Then you can learn about that pretty quickly after receiving the item and attempting to prepare the item for use on the data received.
Once that happens they can have promptly returned the item then as nonconforming defective goods, as soon as they discovered the unit won't work due to the unadvertised requirements /
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I would have stopped at "needs internet."
A bike doesn't need internet. If one does, it's more scam than bike. Same for car, refrigerator, lawnmower, or thermostat.
I agree entirely. Unfortunately, in the future it may be almost impossible to acquire anything which uses electricity, which doesn't also require an active internet connection. Every company with the wherewithal to do so is moving toward a business model in which all products are provided under rental / subscription terms.
Never mind SaaS - it will be HaaS, where the 'H' stands for any example of an arbitrarily large selection of 'Hardware'. The clear intent of this is to allow companies to "alter the bargai
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Re: Who buys this shit? (Score:3)
Fourth category: people who understand they are surrounded by a nonnegligible quantity of morons and scam artists, and act accordingly.
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van doofus (Score:3, Insightful)
You paid $4K for a bike, you can afford to buy a new one.
Re: van doofus (Score:4, Interesting)
Add to that how much you paid for maintenance and repairs, since those things aren't serviceable easily.
I went to a bike workshop to get info and a quote on some upgrades I was planning on my normal bike, and it was full of clients' bikes. I was surprised to see among them plenty of the same model, so i asked about it.
The guy told me it was vanmoof bikes, he described them as the iphone of bikes. The workshop was vanmoof certified, so like with apple, they get the tools and procedures to work on them and are referred to officially (because vanmoof doesn't have shops itself).
According to the guy, if you want to work on them, you need to follow exactly the procedures, because if you don't, you're guaranteed to break or disconnect something inside and good luck repairing it after that.
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You paid $4K for a bike, you can afford to buy a new one.
If you can afford to spend £3K on a bike that someone else can lock you out of, you should be able to afford a new one.
I'm Laughing On The Inside Too (Score:2)
I need this feature on my toilet and refrigerator.
Better option (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't buy shit tied to the cloud.
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I sort of get when the device's principal function is based on cloud data. I don't get it when the device doesn't really have anything to do with that, and I really don't get it when the device, which has no primary cloud function or software licensing requiring renewal, is capable of being bricked in this way.
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LG is selling refrigerators that require a subscription.
Hopefully the meat doesn't go bad when tjhe bank changes your cc number.
That would stink.
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I don't get it when the device doesn't really have anything to do with that
Oh but it does! You get an app where you can see where the bike is. See? It needs "the cloud"!
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Don't buy shit tied to the cloud.
Appreciated, but there's no evidence anywhere that this bike was "tied to the cloud". I bet you didn't know about this either until now, and since the website specifically says it uses bluetooth unlock how would you as the consumer make an informed decision?
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Don't buy shit tied to the cloud.
Appreciated, but there's no evidence anywhere that this bike was "tied to the cloud". I bet you didn't know about this either until now, and since the website specifically says it uses bluetooth unlock how would you as the consumer make an informed decision?
If it requires agreeing to any kind of ToS or EULA to use a bike, don't agree, and return it immediately.
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You don't need to agree to a ToS or EULA to buy or use the bike. In fact if you buy one you can ride it directly home from the store before even bothering to install the app at which point you'll be given a EULA.
Mind you every god damn piece of anything comes with a EULA now, mostly it's just not displayed on a phone and rather buried in the manual you never read.
Again the average consumer isn't given the information needed to make an informed decision here, and that is a problem.
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mostly it's just not displayed on a phone and rather buried in the manual you never read.
If they had just stuck it in the manual that would become
Unenforceable legal verbiage just being thrown at the customer after with no way to show the necessary elements to form an agreement (No offer, and no consideration: The customer already obtained the legal right to use the copy at the time of purchase through ownership of the copy and the automatic and implicit license to use the copy they own, and No acceptan
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Unenforceable legal verbiage
Most EULAs are already this, if not for the legal issues regarding the way they are presented then it is because of the completely stupidly unenforceable text contained within.
The premise was that you shouldn't buy anything with a EULA or a ToS, the fact is most products have them. Whether or not they are enforceable wasn't the point (and they mostly aren't).
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Don't buy shit tied to the cloud.
Appreciated, but there's no evidence anywhere that this bike was "tied to the cloud".
With the notable exception of the very first sentence quoted in this /. posting: .While unlocking is activated by Bluetooth when your phone comes into range of the bike, it relies on a rolling key code — and that function in turn relies on access to a VanMoof server
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Doesn't mean the server is in the cloud.
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With the notable exception of the very first sentence quoted in this /. posting
Except buyers don't come to Slashdot looking for stories to make purchasing decisions so either you're being dense or completely missed my point. As of yesterday afternoon, *YOU* wouldn't have had a fucking clue that there was any cloud connectivity associated with this bike. How does that help you not buy it?
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Sure, if you want to use Bluetooth to unlock the bike with one touch, then yes, you need to have a signed in app on your phone. However, there's another way to unlock the bike intended for exactly this type of situation (phone is dead, don't have your phone, server goes away), and thats to enter a user-defined 4 digit code on the bike to unlock it.
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Seriously! Why would you ever consider buying a bike that depends on some server being on-line? What possible advantage could that bring??
Shame on them for requiring cloud login (Score:5, Insightful)
There should be a shame list for companies that require cloud login to use the main advertised features of the hardware you bought. You don't really own these devices; they will be shut down as soon as the manufacturer decides to stop supporting them.
- VanMoof
- Ooler/Sleepme/ChiliSleep
And we need a word for this, like "support locked".
Re:Shame on them for requiring cloud login (Score:5, Insightful)
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Don't forget Tesla
Do you have one? The internet indicates it still works without a data connection. And from the stories of Teslas being stolen, broken down, and reassembled, we know they can be made to work without a proper account setup. So my evidence says they work without a connection to the parent company. Do you have evidence to the contrary?
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Re:Shame on them for requiring cloud login (Score:4, Informative)
Bike theft is a massive issue, part of the selling point of vanmoof was the cloud connection that made them less attractive to steal. This article is all speculation, there is no sane reason why the bikes would be bricked.
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Hopefully there is a solution to theft now, or at least very soon when Google rolls out support for their new Find My Device network which is basically an open version of Apple's AirTag stuff. Apparently Apple will be part of it too.
Then any manufacturer can simply add Bluetooth Low Energy capability to a device and it becomes trackable. Crypto is used so that other people can't track your stuff. By building it into the device, it will be very difficult to remove.
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I guess, but you would need to remember to change the battery regularly, and such trackers can be detected and removed without too much difficulty. Plus Apple only for the moment.
Re: Shame on them for requiring cloud login (Score:2)
Ah so I suppose google's tracking solution will not use a discrete piece of electronics, but rather weave the computation through the actual object, so that the tracking module cannot be removed or tampered with, and also it will run on neutrinos or fairy dust or something! Wow! Can't wait to see how they get it to scale!!!
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Yes well. Now it turns out that vanmoof riders are increasingly targetted for their phone as well. Nice app. Duh.
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"...the cloud connection that made them less attractive to steal..."
No, that's a VanMoof talking point. Thieves don't know the difference and the bikes are not harder to steal.
"This article is all speculation..."
Like your post.
"...there is no sane reason why the bikes would be bricked."
No one has claimed that either. As clearly explained, the bikes MIGHT be bricked in the future, for the CLEAR, SANE reasons presented.
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No, that's a VanMoof talking point. Thieves don't know the difference and the bikes are not harder to steal.
You are saying what exactly? The major connected e-bikes manufacturers (sparta, gazelle, vanmoof) all claim high retrieval rates. Police also prioritizes retrieval of these bikes with GPS tracking. Are you saying this is not true? Do you have any source for this being not true? Any thief not aware of this would be in prison very quickly.
No one has claimed that either. As clearly explained, the bikes MIGHT be bricked in the future, for the CLEAR, SANE reasons presented.
So you say the article says the bikes might be bricked, and then you say that no-one claims that bikes could be bricked? Not sure how I could argue with such amazing logic.
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This article is all speculation, there is no sane reason why the bikes would be bricked.
The summary explains why the bikes might get locked out; the company shows all the signs of being on the verge of bankruptcy and the bikes depend on a connection to the servers the company runs in order to be unlocked. No company = no servers. No servers = no unlocking via bluetooth.
There is a clunky three digit code you can set and enter to unlock the bike without your phone or an internet connection, but there's a good chance the people with these bikes set that and forgot the code.
The part that wasn't
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I agree their servers might be in the cloud, but they might be on premises. Why do people these days always assume a server is in the cloud. I wouldn't hire people who make assumptions like that, even if many companies operate that way now.
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You are an idiot. Cloud always means on a server that doesn't belong to the vendor (i.e. VanMoof). It doesn't matter the consumer's perspective. I can't believe how stupid people are now. If you work in IT or software, please do everyone a favour and quite. Work at MacDonald's or something more your speed.
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How is this off topic? People keep saying 'cloud' without thinking it means means something.
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There should be a shame list for companies that require cloud login
Doesn't seem to solve it. By all accounts if you look at the literature it says "bluetooth unlock". The bad software practices that come after create the cloud dependence, not some advertised cloud service reliance.
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"Smart" Is Stupid (Score:2)
Everything labelled as a "smart X" is always and inherently worse at performing the functions of an X than a non-smart version of X. The only thing a "smart" X is better at than an X is siphoning your data to sell to data brokers. And you pay significantly more for the privilege of having your data sold and get worse results. A smart thermos doesn't keep your beverage hot or cold as well as a regular thermos. A smart lightbulb leaves you in the dark whenever someone else's server goes down or you lose inter
Re: "Smart" Is Stupid (Score:2)
These things are smart on the sellers side as exploiting their customer base long-term is very profitable.
I'm betting this cowboy company with the free helper app is going to start charging as soon as they have customers on the hook.
Unlocking should be a basic owner's right (Score:4, Informative)
To be fair, they don't even need to open source unsupported devices, just push a last update that allows them to be used standalone, without the backend.
Re:You guys are being the same luddites as always (Score:4, Insightful)
You do realise that the summary exposes the flaw in your argument? The replacement app demonstrates that the server is unnecessary: a local device suffices. I would go further and suggest that the rolling key is overkill and that a 4-digit PIN would suffice for a realistic threat model.
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and that a 4-digit PIN would suffice for a realistic threat model.
Vanmoof bikes have a manual unlock with a pin that can be entered using the handlebar controls. No app necessary. The only thing being offered here is a replication of the original app, that includes features not dissimilar from any modern car which unlocks the doors as you approach. Having something more intelligent than a simple 4 digit number to do this authentication is a damn good idea. Just ask Kia who are at the receiving end of a lawsuit thanks to how insanely trivial it was to steal their cars.
Let me get it straight (Score:3)
This is beyond dumb, even with no bankruptcy. The article does not mention if you need server access to lock the bike. If you do, then you cannot lock your bike if you don't have Internet. If you don't then you cannot unlock your bike if you don't have internet.Good fun carrying that bike up to the street from the underground garage. Either way dumb.
I use a company of shared cars, pay by the minute, and you can park in an underground garage with no internet, then close with your key, and then for some reason they will lock the motor, so you need your phone to unlock it. And you cannot if you have no internet. Fortunately you can do it remotely and it takes like five minutes till they block it again, but you have to go up, unlock and come back. It's real fun if you are in a hurry.
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The article does not mention if you need server access to lock the bike. If you do, then you cannot lock your bike if you don't have Internet.
You don't.
What happens when you switch phones? (Score:2)
If the server is down, then you get a new phone, how do you initialize the Cowboy app on the new phone?
I think I will stick to my twenty year old Trek. It works without a phone.
Buyer beware (Score:2)
If the buyer has the stupidity to think cloud-locked is a benefit, then he deserves to lose his vehicle/communications device/appliance. Maybe, the result will be more and more consumers demanding control of the vehicle/appliance they paid to 'own': A good start is demanding the manufacturer specify a EoL date in the sales contract. (That doesn't protect the consumer during bankruptcy or merger/buy-out.) Or at least, corporations will be unable to sell the latest subscription-based i-Shiny.
Better Suggestion (Score:2)
Buy an actual good quality bike lock, and leave stupid shit like this alone. Why the fuck do you need the internet to use a bike. I hope the company goes offline in the next 30 seconds; people who buy shit like this deserve shit like this. And another thing, Holland is as flat as a fucking pancake. Why the fuck do people need electric bikes there to begin with?
The fine line between possessor- and ownership (Score:2)
Personally, I love it! Just like Tesla (and an increasing number of products) where companies dupe people into believing that forking over big bucks for mere possessorship constitutes ownership – only to realize that they have really just rented their "precious". I don't mind as long as this just hits fools who deserve to be parted from their money. But I get upset when they try to push this on regular people (including myself) who cannot afford such shenanigans - and should not have to suffer them.
VOLT Bikes opinion on Vanmoof (Score:1)