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SYNC: astounding stupidity! Caution, rant ahead...

11K views 52 replies 23 participants last post by  __V__ 
#1 ·
I so steamed, I'm posting this both on here and on the Fiesta Faction.


I'm flabbergasted! Astounded, stupefied, dumbstruck, astonished.
I would say surprised, but considering that Microsoft is the author of this software, I shouldn't be.

The cause of all this consternation happened when I tried to connect to the internet with my new 2014 ST that has SYNC and the (in)famous My Ford Touch system. I was parked in my garage and followed all the screens to find my home's internet (via the home's wireless router), no problem. Naturally, before the router will let me access the internet, I needed to log in with my password.

Here's where the problems started: imagine that (pretty) large screen with a touch keyboard and a ton of blank space. No numeric keypad and no symbols means you have to keep switching to different built-in keyboards for each upper-case or lower-case letter, another keyboard for numbers, and yet another for symbols. So, I'm plugging along and when I got to the tenth character of the password, the system wouldn't let me enter in any more.

After a few more unsuccessful attempt's I decided to call Fords SYNC help line (800-392-4040). To make a long story shorter, I was told that the SYNC system has a built-in limitation of ten characters for a password length. To get access to my home router, I would have to reduce it's password length to ten characters maximum. WHICH I REFUSE TO DO.

To those of you who are puzzled by my dismay, please be informed that a ten character password on an internet router is wholly inadequate. A common password length that gets automatically generated by a good router is sixty-four characters long. Anything less is an invitation to hackers to get into your system.

Needless to say, I gave the SYNC operator an earful and invited them into the twenty-first century. Ten characters might have been a fine password twenty years ago, but it's a criminally stupid limitation nowadays.


FORD! ARE YOU LISTENING???

<END RANT>
 
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#4 ·
Do you often get in your car at home to use the internet? I have computers to do that. :p Once you drive out of range of the router (which won't take long) you will no longer have connectivity anyway. I don't really see the use for it... Maybe if you're parked somewhere on a trip and find free wifi and need to get on the internet but don't have a phone or laptop handy.

As far as password size, 64 characters is quite overkill. If you have your router set at WPA2 as it should then a 15 character password should be plenty adequate. My password is a 24 character sentence made out of capital and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols. I wouldn't even be able to guess my password and I made it. And a hacker would have one heck of a time hacking it. That being said, yes a 10 character limit is quite silly because even my apparently tiny password is 14 characters longer, but really I can't think of any real use for it...
 
#5 ·
I do have to agree.
To sit in the car to access the internet does sound a little silly.
When twenty feet away is a 27 inch monitor, full keyboard, and a mouse.
Even then, when I am on the road, I have my tablet and phone.
I must say I do not know why I would EVER use the car for this.

Dave
 
#6 ·
You're all right, up to a point. I wouldn't normally sit in the garage to access the internet, I was actually thinking that perhaps SYNC can update itself this way and was going to explore the possibility. But the car can act as an access point for other devices (laptop, tablet, phone), and most people would use it this way or at free wi-fi spots where possibly no password would be required.

The fact remains, a ten character limit for passwords is ridiculous. And a sixty-four character password is not overkill. If that's what you believe, then you haven't been keeping abreast of the password cracking abilities of modern computers & techniques. Some interesting reading about password security can be seen at http://arstechnica.com/


And this still leaves with the extremely poor keyboard. If you ever try to use it, you'll see what I mean. If Ford is going to build in a capability, there's no excuse to do it so badly...
 
#7 ·
I connected our Escape to our home internet during one of the updates and realized that at no time did we ever use it. I did not bother connecting it again. I guess I don't understand the point of connecting the car to the internet. If I am in my garage then I am home, if I am home, I will be using my computer, phone, or tablet for the internet.
 
#8 ·
There is another setting page that allows you to connect to the data connection from your phone. It is in the phone settings and appears to indicate that phone data will be used for sync services. I was able to connect MFT to my iPhone data connection, but when I went to the sync page and pressed connect, MFT still made the phone call and didn't use the internet.
 
#9 ·
I'm still not quite catching on to the point of the access point for other devices either. If you have a wifi capable device that you need to connect and your car can connect, why can't you direct connect to the wifi through your laptop/tablet/phone rather than bothering to connect the MFT and then the wireless device to the MFT? As with the home router, once you move out of range of the wireless you are using it's going to disconnect so you will no longer have access. But whatever. If you can make it work for what you need it for that's all that matters.
 
#10 ·
.Sil3nt611, What you're saying exactly reflects my thinking. If the car can connect to the internet, then so can whatever other device you have, so why do I need the intermediary? Maybe it could be a range extender? Or allow more users by being an access point? I'm puzzled

I was trying to connect to the internet to see if the answer might become obvious after I got there, but I was frustrated by the limited password capabilities built into the system and never got there.
 
#11 ·
I was rolling my eyes back when i started reading your post since hey... you only have to enter your password once.... but your point is that a 10 character limit is rediculous, and i totally agree. How did they mess that up? What i was hoping for is the ability to update sync and download mods for it.
 
#12 ·
im close to buying one of these. i could care less about sync. when i wanna run a computer in my car i have a gamber johnson temp rest that mounts to the passenger seat and mounts my laptop. attached to the laptop is a usb evdo dongle. i run a pure sine inverter for power on long hauls. i've used this from the smoky mountains app trail to the ga and fla beaches, driven from a to b and never been disconnected....

now.. having said that, for those that say they sync is stupid and you loose your connection to the net once you leave the driveway, i guess none of you guys have a smartphone that is also a wifi hot spot. in which case if sync does something useful (i have no idea what it does btw) then being able to connect to a wifi in the car, and stay connected makes some sense.

my opinion, you want a computer in your car, have some shop install a carputer or mount a laptop ala a cop car.. is interesting to see the local drive in burger joint ask me what is on my computer and i say HBO far-casted to my car via a slingbox to my laptop hi-def 1900x1200 screen via a wireless connection from my home. and then change the channel or switch to a remote blueray player...
 
#13 ·
I hated sync when I had it in a previous vehicle... I literally never bothered with it again after neither I, nor the sales people could get it to sync with any of my stuff.

I really don't NEED it ever.. Between laptops, smart phones, etc... so I never gave much of a damn. Just forgot about it.

The MFT/Sync or whatever in the loaner vehicle I'm in right now, drives me up the wall... Pretty sure it's defective.. Half the time when shutting off the car the sync kicks in and the volume is always max by default so that annoying bimbo screaming at me asking me to input commands. I am not hitting any buttons... And it never recognizes the proper word commands either. Lady needs to learn to use an indoor voice, and leave me alone. lol

I'm a reasonably computer/tech savvy guy. But that MFT/Sync stinks.

If I had my way the screen, the loud lady, and all of those features would be left out of my car. Save me the coin & the headache.

But yeah, I just pretend they aren't there.
 
#18 · (Edited)
Hey everyone,

I saw this post over at Fiesta Faction. I wanted to respond to this thread and clarify a few things. MyFord Touch with V3.6.2 installed currently has a character limit of 10 digits. On previous software versions, you may see an 8 digit limit. I've seen on a few forums that owners have tried connecting to the internet in order to update SYNC. As of now, the only way to update at home is by downloading to a USB from: www.Support.Ford.com Although MyFord Touch will allow you to connect to a home network, there isn't much benefit in doing so. It is intended to acquire a signal from your smartphone or a USB Mobile Broadband device. It's beneficial to connect to the phone when it has a limit of devices that it can connect to. Instead, you can tether it with the car and connect multiple devices to MyFord Touch instead of your phone.
...

The MFT/Sync or whatever in the loaner vehicle I'm in right now, drives me up the wall... Pretty sure it's defective.. Half the time when shutting off the car the sync kicks in and the volume is always max by default so that annoying bimbo screaming at me asking me to input commands. I am not hitting any buttons... And it never recognizes the proper word commands either. Lady needs to learn to use an indoor voice, and leave me alone. lol
Hi Mayhem,

You can control the volume by pressing the 2 gears at the bottom center of the screen > press VOICE CONTROL > press the minus symbol (next to VOICE CONTROL VOLUME) until the volume is where you'd like it. To make the SYNC voice talk less, press ADVANCED (next to INTERACTION MODE) > OFF (next to CONFIRMATION PROMPTS) .

Kim
 
#17 · (Edited)
Who parks and sits in their car and uses the screen for internet lol that is what iPhones are for. People are finding the smallest things to complain about. It's a performance car not a MacBook Pro. But each his own that's just my opinion as your priorities are different. I commute 40 miles to work so I was looking for something fun, durable and small. That technology stuff is just a bonus for me.
 
#19 ·
Thanks ;) No problem getting the volume down. It's just strange... that it seems to always trigger when shutting the car off and even if my Radio volume is currently very low, it defaults to max volume as soon as the voice command prompt kicks in. I'll definitely give the advanced option a try though. Thanks for the input.
 
#25 ·
#23 ·
Actually, a 64 character password is kinda ridiculous as per a test completed by tomshardware in 2011.
"Fortunately, math is our friend (seriously, it is). If you use the full ASCII character set, then your password strength is 94(password length), because every additional character makes a password 94 times more secure. By adding a few extra characters to your password, you're making it "computationally infeasible" for hackers to attempt a brute-force attack. If 7 298 831 534 994 528 possible combinations (in a one- to nine-character password) isn’t enough to make you comfortable, use a 10-character password, and give any hacker 699 823 827 359 474 784 combinations to try.

Based on our testing, you probably could hit a little over 3 million passwords per second against AES encryption using a pair of Radeon HD 6990s. That means it'd take 7397 years to perform a search of passwords from one to 10 characters long using AMD's Stream acceleration. Even if you could double your speed from there, it wouldn't be much help. To get under one year, you'd have to scale your efforts to 7397 machines working full-time."
 
#24 ·
Actually, a 64 character password is kinda ridiculous as per a test completed by tomshardware in 2011.
Actually, "ridiculous" is the goal! Making passwords that are easier to crack would defeat the purpose, wouldn't it?

And since Toms Hardware tests in 2011, new techniques have been developed using lists of millions of actual passwords that allow those previous "brute force" cracking time estimates to be reduced dramatically. The long password crack is no longer, "computationally infeasible". It can be done in minutes using the "dictionary" techniques by using the lists of previously leaked passwords.

I don't profess to be an expert on the subject, but I like to keep abreast of the technology, and it's naive to think that the cracking technology is standing still, when the incentive value is so high. What was impossible yesterday is easily attainable today. Just look at the mobile phone you probably have in your pocket...
 
#26 ·
Most of my passwords include* past license plates of mine. Relatively easy to remember and a great source of random characters making it pretty much impossible for dictionary attacks.

*note: I said "include" since the passwords do have more characters added to increase complexity and the obvious effort of people trying my license plate number when I mention this.
 
#27 ·
Thanks ;) No problem getting the volume down. It's just strange... that it seems to always trigger when shutting the car off and even if my Radio volume is currently very low, it defaults to max volume as soon as the voice command prompt kicks in. I'll definitely give the advanced option a try though. Thanks for the input.
I suspect that the voice commands have a separate volume setting, either through the settings menu or by simply adjusting the volume knob when the sync lady is talking.
 
#28 ·
Most of my passwords include* past license plates of mine. Relatively easy to remember and a great source of random characters making it pretty much impossible for dictionary attacks.

*note: I said "include" since the passwords do have more characters added to increase complexity and the obvious effort of people trying my license plate number when I mention this.
For sites like this, I use a simple password that is easy to remember and use it on most of the sites where there is no financial incentive to crack it.

But for a bank, or any site that has my credit card number, I've given up on trying to remember a "good" long password. I review the sites password limits as to length and characters allowed and use a program to randomly generate the longest word possible (I haven't seen any site that I use allow more than 22 characters). I then save this using a password manager that allows copy & paste, so it's just as easy to use a long password as a short one. Here's a good article on password managers for reference:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2381432,00.asp
 
#31 ·
Mayhem, it has been my experience that radio volume, voice prompt volume, and in-call volume are all independent. If you turn the volume knob while a voice prompt is active then you will adjust the voice prompt volume. Same for adjusting volume while in a call. It will save those volumes for the next time.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 
#32 ·
Sometimes MFT won't recognize the address book fields correctly from my iPhone, and depending on what mood it's in, I have to specify either cell or other for anything tagged 'iPhone'.

Text message syncing works sporadically.

And last but not least, 'Advanced Mode' should disable all nags/prompts, but all it does is get rid of the one when you press the listen button.
 
#33 ·
Hi cinderbike,

It sounds like you do have your phonebook downloaded already. If that's the case, what happens when you try to call a specific contact? Does the MyFord Touch system not understand you at all?

Make sure you're following these steps in order for text messaging to work properly: http://support.ford.com/sync-technology/how-to-allow-ios-text-messaging-sync-myford-touch A soft reset to your iPhone should also improve your connection. Just hold the POWER and HOME buttons until the Apple logo appears. When the phone turns on again, it will automatically connect to the MyFord Touch system.

Since you already have advanced mode turned on, press the VOICE COMMAND button on the steering wheel and say VOICE SETTINGS, then CONFIRMATION PROMPTS OFF. This will cause your system to make a best guess instead of confirming every command. You may still occasionally hear confirmation questions.

Kim
 
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