Text: Yangcheng Evening News reporter Wu Shan.
With the advancement of technology, smart parking lots are becoming more and more common. Before the vehicle drives out, you only need to scan the QR code to pay the fee and you can easily leave the vehicle. Recently, Ms. Cheng, a citizen of Guangzhou, encountered a strange thing, when she used WeChat to scan the code to pay, she found that her license plate had been bound by others on the parking platform. The Yangcheng Evening News reporter's investigation found that the situation encountered by Ms. Cheng was not an isolated case, and there were similar problems on multiple platforms - the license plate was bound for the first time without any supporting materials, and users could bind an unfamiliar license plate at will. After binding, you can even receive information about the car entering and exiting the parking lot, and the whereabouts of the owner may be exposed.
The first time to tie the license plate "no threshold".
Recently, Ms. Cheng scanned the QR code to pay the fee in the parking lot of the Guangzhou Library, and a prompt to bind the license plate popped up on her mobile phone. "It has two options, one is to bind your own license plate, and the other is to pay for someone else. Ms. Cheng said that she chose the first one, but the system prompted that the license plate had been bound by someone else. It is understood that the parking lot uses the ETCP parking system. ETCP is also a more common parking system on the market, and many parking lots are in use.
Ms. Cheng repeatedly emphasized that she had never bound the license plate number on the ETCP, nor had she entrusted relatives and friends to bind it. Subsequently, she called ETCP customer service** and asked to unbind the license plate. The customer service said that in order to unbind the license plate from another person's account, the vehicle driving license must be uploaded. "Why should I upload personal information, and does this platform have the right to collect personal information?Ms. Cheng declined the other party's request. What puzzled her even more was how the stranger bound her license plate. "The license has always been in my possession, and the car has never been borrowed. Ms. Cheng said that her car is a new car and there is no possibility of second-hand trading.
The reporter learned in detail about the binding process of the vehicle in ETCP as a user. Find "My Vehicle" and manage it by following etcp WeChat***, select "Add Vehicle" and enter the license plate of Mr. Guo, an enthusiastic car owner (with the consent of the other party). After clicking to confirm that the license plate is correct, the reporter easily tied the car to his account without any authentication link. At this time, Mr. Guo tried to bind twice, and encountered the same problem as Ms. Cheng.
The investigation found that the same situation not only exists in ETCP, but also on another head smart parking platform "Jie Parking", the reporter also realized the operation of "easily" binding unfamiliar license plates. It is worth noting that the operation of "Jet Parking" is more subtle - after the license plate is bound by others for the first time, when I bind it again, the Jet Parking platform will not prompt that the license plate has been bound, but directly jump to the owner authentication page of the uploaded certificate. "Often, people are reluctant to upload documents for authentication. In this way, people may intuitively believe that their license plate is still in an unbound state. In fact, it has been kidnapped by others. Ms. Cheng questioned that the process of Jet Parking was suspected of infringing on the user's right to know.
What's even more worrying is that when the license plate is bound by a stranger, you can receive the vehicle's entry and exit message push through ETP and Jet Parking. The reporter conducted an experiment and asked Mr. Guo to drive his vehicle to a parking lot that uses ETCP or Jet Parking. When the vehicle entered and exited the parking lot, the reporter's mobile phone accurately received the push information of the car. In some of the messages, the name of the parking lot where Mr. Guo's car was parked even showed it. Mr. Guo confirmed that the license plate had never been authenticated on the above two platforms, and this statement was also confirmed by the customer service.
It's so dangerous, and I feel like I'm being followed!If this information is used by people with ulterior motives, the consequences are unimaginable. Mr. Guo questioned that there were loopholes in the way that the platform party binds the license plate number without threshold. On social platforms such as Xiaohongshu, some bloggers also posted similar experiences, and some even posted complaints: "You can actually track your husband like this", pointing out that there are problems with the Jet parking platform. Another netizen said, "It's really scary, I just found out that my boyfriend knew where and when my car was parked, just because he helped me pay the parking fee." ”
During the investigation, the reporter learned that the vulnerability has been exploited by some "well-intentioned people" or companies. "Some debt collection agencies will bind the license plate of the debt collector, and when the debt collector enters or exits a parking lot, they will be notified immediately and the next step will be taken. An insider told reporters that the practice has existed for many years.
Is there a reason why there is no threshold?
It is understood that ETCP and Jie Parking are currently the two leading smart parking platforms in China, and there are a large number of parking lots equipped with two-platform systems. The concern is that if the loopholes are not plugged as soon as possible, the larger the coverage of these parking lots, the greater the anxiety for users.
This means that wherever there is one of these parking lots, my whereabouts may be seen by the person who binds the license plate. For the sake of safety, Ms. Cheng is considering whether to upload her license plate to unbind the license plate. Mr. Guo bound the license plate information to multiple smart parking platforms in one go. "There's no way, now I can only bind it first and make myself the first binder of the license plate. Mr. Guo said that this also indirectly forces users to pay attention to the WeChat of these platforms, and in the process, they must disclose the ** number to the platform.
The reporter learned that the problem of "loopholes" bound to the smart parking platform for the first time has long been there, and many users have had complaint experiences, but the platform does not seem to care. On December 18, the reporter successively called ETCP and Jet Parking customer service as a user, and both customer service confirmed that in the case that the license plate was not bound, the first time the certificate can be bound. When asked about the "vulnerability", the customer service said that the rules of the platform are like this. On the same day, the public relations staff of JieParking got in touch with a reporter from Yangcheng Evening News, and said that under normal circumstances, the entry and exit messages seen by unauthenticated users will not display the name of the parking lot, but will be uniformly and vaguely displayed as "JieParking Smart Parking Lot". When the reporter cited the case of Mr. Guo, who did not have a certified license plate and also received a message with the name of the parking lot, the public relations officer of Jiejie Parking said that it may be a "special case".
There is no threshold for binding license plates for the first time, what are the considerations of the smart parking platform?
In this regard, the public relations staff of JieParking did not reply. Mr. Li, director of a large advertising company in Guangzhou, told reporters that people with houses and cars are high-net-worth advertising audiences. "Advertisers with high unit prices, such as finance, like these groups the most. You can see if there are a lot of ads on these parking software, and most of them are financial. Mr. Li revealed that getting the *** of car owners is very important for advertising promotion. "If the threshold is high, are you still willing to bind?If you don't bind, you may not even be able to get your **. ”
It is understood that in the operation of the smart parking platform, advertising revenue is one of the important incomes. The 2023 semi-annual report of Jieshun Technology, the major shareholder behind Jieshun Parking, mentioned when talking about the advertising operation business, "The smart parking business has natural rigid needs, high frequency, accurate customers, wide coverage and other factors, which provides a good market foundation for advertising operations." 'Jet Parking' pulls through online applications such as the app *** H5 life account and the offline parking lot space, and implements precise advertising push and reach based on location, business format, and crowd portrait. Adopt the mode of online and offline interaction, carry out large-scale and precise advertising coverage, and fully integrate and utilize explicit and implicit advertising resources in parking lots, so that advertising operations can directly and effectively reach the connection. ”
Such accurate advertising is beneficial to the parking platform, but it suffers users. The reporter found on the black cat complaint platform that there were nearly 200 complaints about ETCP parking and nearly 300 complaints about Jet parking. Many of the complaints referred to alleged false advertising.
ETCP WeChat *** certification subject for Beijing Yuechang Technology *** equity penetration shows that the major shareholder behind it is Dalian Wanda Commercial Management Group Co., Ltd. *** Jie Parking" is a product of Shenzhen Shun Yitong Information Technology, and the company's major shareholder is the listed company Jieshun Technology. According to public reports, ETCP Parking, as the founder and leader of the domestic smart parking lot construction and operation industry, has served 260 cities in China and more than 150,000 cooperative parking lots, serving nearly 12.7 billion car owners, covering 23.2 billion cars. Jieshun Technology's smart parking service has achieved scene coverage in 369 cities across the country, and the smart networked parking lot 280,000, and the cumulative number of users exceeded 85 million.