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The Tesla Motors Inc. Model X sport utility vehicle (SUV).

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images

A Tesla Model X totaled in the U.S. late last year suddenly came back online and started sending notifications to the phone of its former owner, CNBC executive editor Jay Yarow, months later.

The car or its computer was suddenly online in a Southern region of war-torn Ukraine, he found by opening up his Tesla app and using a geolocation feature. The new owners in Ukraine were tapping into his still-connected Spotify app to listen to Drake radio playlists, he also discovered.

When Yarow posted about this to the social network X, formerly known as Twitter, his post went viral, and followers wanted to know why this this happening and whether it was a security risk.

According to the CTO of automotive security firm Canis Labs, Ken Tindell, there can indeed be a security risk with totaled cars that are restored.

He explained in an e-mail to CNBC, “The credentials to internet services are clearly left in the vehicle electronics and then can be used by whoever gets hold of the electronics.” He added, “In general it’s possible to get data out of working electronics — it’s merely a question of how much effort that takes.” 

This is far from a Tesla-specific issue, he said. Cars, like laptops, smartphones, and even refrigerators and TVs, are now internet-connected devices that can store personal data.

“I think it needs to be more widely understood by dealers and owners that there is this issue of private data within the vehicle,” Tindell said.

Overseas demand for totaled Teslas

How did the vehicle end up in Ukraine?

CNBC found that after the car was totaled, online auction site Copart listed it for sale, according to website listings. The company, which currently has more than 1,600 Tesla vehicles listed for sale, is connected to salvage yards across the U.S., including one in New Jersey where the car ended up.

Copart specializes in damaged or totaled vehicles that have what’s called a “salvage title,” issued when an insurance company declares it a total loss, warning future buyers that there was a significant problem. Copart sells more than 2 million vehicles a year, with operations in 11 countries, according to the company’s website.

Such vehicles cannot legally drive on U.S. roadways, but some countries aren’t as stringent.

“Cars go to the repair shop or junk yard then find their way to a second market and then are suddenly being shipped overseas,” said Mike Dunne, a former General Motors international executive who now serves as CEO of auto consulting firm ZoZoGo.

The practice has been going on for decades and accelerated with the rise of digital auctions, according to Steven Lang, an auctioneer and founder of used car marketplace 48 Hours And A Used Car.

“Starting in the Y2K era, the digital auction site took over. So now you can have someone in Ukraine bidding on it. And then someone else from Norway bidding on it … and you haven’t even touched an American border or an American bidder,” said Lang, who has been in the vehicle auction business for more than 24 years.

“Virtually all of the vehicles that are totaled will end up at a salvage auction,” he said.

One online auction website that specializes in such sales estimated the winning bid for the vehicle would be between $27,400 and $29,400. A final sale price was not immediately known. Neither the salvage yard nor Copart immediately responded for comment about the vehicle and who bought it.

What owners can do after the fact

Tesla support staff told Yarow he should disconnect his car from his account, offering the following instructions via email:

1. Open the Tesla app Tap profile icon in top-right corner

2. Tap ‘Add/Remove Products’ > ‘Remove’ > ‘Vehicle’

3. Select the VIN, then tap ‘Get Started’

4. Enter the vehicle and sale details, then tap ‘Next’

5. Enter the new owner information, then tap ‘Next’

6. Enter security code from e-mail, then tap ‘Confirm’

7.Submit the request by clicking on ‘Remove Vehicle’

Reminder: If it asks if you sold the vehicle say yes.”

Tesla didn’t tell him how he was supposed to obtain the new owner information as he hadn’t sold the car.

According to Canis Labs CTO Ken Tindell, disconnecting one’s account from a totaled vehicle can help stop others from using apps that had been connected, such as Spotify in Yarow’s case. However, data could still be extracted from the totaled vehicle’s electronics.

“What would the trip history and phone book of a celebrity be worth to a blackmailer or a kidnapper?” Tintell asked.

He and other security experts compared the situation having an Apple laptop stolen. In some cases, Apple can wipe the laptop or device clean remotely when it comes online. But “a malign repair shop can take out the hard drive and copy all the data off it before scrapping a broken laptop.”

This is why Apple routinely encrypts its hard drives, the CTO noted. “It’s the only way to prevent the data being stolen by someone with physical access to an offline device.”

An automotive cybersecurity veteran and the founder of RightHook, Warren Ahner, said that ideally a company like Tesla would “Have a portal where a user can sign in with online credentials and say ‘remove all my info, then disconnect my vehicle from the account,’ and would be able issue a remote-wipe command to the car when it comes online, deleting it all including GPS, saved locations and the rest.”

However, he said, owners can be their own “personal risk police,” and avoid giving their vehicles or rental cars that they use lots of personal info.

“Always purge your data after you are done with the vehicle and try not to share more info with the car than you absolutely need to share,” Ahner recommended. “If I pair my phone with the car I’m renting or owning I don’t allow it to synch location and contacts. I only give it Bluetooth access to talk over the top of my music and so I can us whatever music streaming app I like.”

An automotive white hat hacker who uses the handle Green the Only has been sounding the alarm about data on cars for years. “All the phone directory and calendar stuff might be valuable,” he said.

Once a car or car computer has changed possession is back online, he says that the previous owners “can’t do much.” One problem is that an old owner can “accrue charges for Supercharging,” and other items Tesla — or other vehicle makers — may sell on a subscription or pay-per-charge basis. They can always submit a request to Tesla to remove the car from their account, but that’s it.

Green the Only agreed with Tindell and Ahner — Tesla “probably can add a ‘remote wipe and then remove from my account’ in addition to the ‘remove from my account’ option they have now. They probably should have added that long ago.”

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Apple has its best week since July 2020 after White House visit

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Apple has its best week since July 2020 after White House visit

U.S. President Donald Trump and Apple CEO Tim Cook shake hands on the day they present Apple’s announcement of a $100 billion investment in U.S. manufacturing, in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., August 6, 2025.

Jonathan Ernst | Reuters

Apple shares rose 13% this week, its largest weekly gain in more than five years, after CEO Tim Cook appeared with President Donald Trump in the White House on Wednesday.

Shares of the iPhone maker rose 4% to close at $229.35 per share on Friday for the company’s largest weekly gain since July 2020. The week’s move added over $400 billion to Apple’s market cap, which now sits at $3.4 trillion.

Apple is the third-most valuable company, behind Nvidia and Microsoft and ahead of Alphabet and Amazon.

At the White House on Wednesday, Cook appeared with Trump to announce Apple’s plans to spend $100 billion on American companies and American parts over the next four years.

Apple’s plans to buy more American chips pleased Trump, who said during the public meeting that because the company was building in the U.S., it would be exempt from future tariffs that could double the price of imported chips.

Investors had worried that some of Trump’s tariffs could substantially hurt Apple’s profitability. Apple warned in July that it expected over $1 billion in tariff costs in the current quarter, assuming no changes.

“Apple and Tim Cook delivered a masterclass in managing uncertainty after months and months of overhang relative to the potential challenges the company could face from tariffs,” JP Morgan analyst Samik Chatterjee wrote on Wednesday. He has an overweight rating on Apple’s stock.

Cook’s successful White House meeting also comes two weeks after Apple reported June quarter earnings in which overall revenue jumped 10% and iPhone sales grew by 13%.

WATCH: Santoli’s Last Word: Apple helps drive S&P higher

Santoli's Last Word: Apple helps drive S&P higher

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Tesla Robotaxi scores permit to run ride-hailing service in Texas

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Tesla Robotaxi scores permit to run ride-hailing service in Texas

In an aerial view, the Tesla headquarters is seen in Austin, Texas, on July 24, 2025.

Brandon Bell | Getty Images

Tesla has been granted a permit to run a ride-hailing business in Texas, allowing the electric vehicle maker to compete against companies including Uber and Lyft.

Tesla Robotaxi LLC is licensed to operate a “transportation network company” until August 6, 2026, according to a listing on the website of the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, or TDLR. The permit was issued this week.

Elon Musk’s EV company has been running a limited ride-hailing service for invited riders in Austin since late June. The select few passengers have mostly been social media influencers and analysts, including many who generate income by posting Tesla fan content on platforms like X and YouTube.

The Austin fleet consists of Model Y vehicles equipped with Tesla’s latest partially automated driving systems. The company has been operating the cars with a valet, or human safety supervisor in the front passenger seat tasked with intervening if there are issues with the ride. The vehicles are also remotely supervised by employees in an operations center.

Musk, who has characterized himself as “pathologically optimistic,” said on Tesla’s earnings call last month that he believes Tesla could serve half of the U.S. population by the end of 2025 with autonomous ride-hailing services.

The Texas permit is the first to enable Tesla to run a “transportation network company.” TDLR said Friday that this kind of permit lets Tesla operate a ride-hailing business anywhere in the state, including with “automated motor vehicles,” and doesn’t require Tesla to keep a human safety driver or valet on board.

Tesla didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

As CNBC previously reported, Tesla robotaxis were captured on camera disobeying traffic rules in and around Austin after the company started its pilot program. None of the known incidents have been reported as causing injury or serious property damage, though they have drawn federal scrutiny.

Elon Musk confirms plan for Tesla robotaxis in Austin, Texas next month

In one incident, Tesla content creator Joe Tegtmeyer reported that his robotaxi failed to stop for a train crossing signal and lowering gate-arm, requiring a Tesla employee on board to intervene. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has discussed this incident with Tesla, a spokesperson for the regulator told CNBC by email.

Texas has historically been more permissive of autonomous vehicle testing and operations on public roads than have other states.

A new law signed by Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott goes into effect this year that will require AV makers to get approval from the state before starting driverless operations. The new law also gives the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles the authority to revoke permits if AV companies and their cars aren’t complying with safety standards.

Tesla’s AV efforts have faced a number of challenges across the country, including federal probes, product liability lawsuits and recalls following injurious or damaging collisions that occurred while drivers were using the company’s Autopilot and FSD (Full Self-Driving) systems.

A jury in a federal court in Miami last week determined that Tesla should hold 33% of the liability for a fatal Autopilot-involved collision.

And the California DMV has sued Tesla, accusing it of false advertising around its driver assistance systems. Tesla owners manuals say the Autopilot and FSD features in their cars are “hands on” systems that require a driver ready to steer or brake at any time. But Tesla and Musk have shared statements through the years saying that a Tesla can “drive itself.”

Since 2016, Musk has been promising that Tesla would soon be able to turn all of its existing EVs into fully autonomous vehicles with a simple, over-the-air software update. In 2019, he said the company would put 1 million robotaxis on the road by 2020, a claim that helped him raise $2 billion at the time from institutional investors.

Those promises never materialized and, in the robotaxi market, Tesla lags way behind competitors like Alphabet’s Waymo in the U.S. and Baidu’s Apollo Go in China.

Tesla shares are down 18% this year, by far the worst performance among tech’s megacaps.

WATCH: What we saw at Tesla’s robotaxi launch in Texas

We went to Texas for Tesla's robotaxi launch. Here's what we saw

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Trade Desk tanks almost 40% on CFO departure, tariff concerns and competition from Amazon

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Trade Desk tanks almost 40% on CFO departure, tariff concerns and competition from Amazon

Jeff Green, CEO of The Trade Desk.

Scott Mlyn | CNBC

Shares of The Trade Desk plummeted almost 40% on Friday and headed for their worst day on record after the ad-tech company announced the departure of its CFO and analysts expressed concerns about rising competition from Amazon.

The Trade Desk, which went public in 2016, suffered its steepest prior drop in February, when the shares fell 33% on a revenue miss. In its second-quarter earnings report late Thursday, the company beat expectations on earnings and revenue, but the results failed to impress investors.

The Trade Desk, which specializes in providing technology to companies that want to target users across the web, said finance chief Laura Schenkein is leaving the job and being replaced by Alex Kayyal, who has been working as a partner at Lightspeed Ventures.

While some analysts were uneasy about the sudden change in the top finance role, the bigger concern is Amazon’s growing role in the online ad market, as well as the potential impact of President Donald Trump’s tariffs on ad spending.

Amazon has emerged as a significant player in the digital advertising market in recent years, and is now third behind Google and Meta. Last week, Amazon reported a 23% increase in ad revenue for the second quarter to $15.7 billion, which beat estimates.

Read more CNBC Amazon coverage

Amazon’s ad business has largely been tied to its own platforms, with brands paying up so they can get discovered on the sprawling marketplace. However, Amazon’s demand-side platform (DSP), which allows brands to programmatically place ads across a wider swath of internet properties, is gaining more resonance in the market.

“Amazon is now unlocking access to traditionally exclusive ‘premium’ ad inventory across the open internet, validating the strength of its DSP and suggesting The Trade Desk’s value proposition could erode over time,” Wedbush analysts wrote on Friday.

The Wedbush analysts lowered their rating on The Trade Desk to the equivalent of hold from buy, and cited Amazon’s recent ad integration with Disney as a sign of the company’s aggressiveness.

Executives at The Trade Desk were asked about Amazon on the call, and responded by suggesting that the companies don’t really compete, emphasizing that Amazon is conflicted because it will always prioritize its own properties.

Simon: The consumer's never been more in control than they are right now

“A scaled independent DSP like The Trade Desk becomes essential as we help advertisers buy across everything and that we have to do that without conflict or compromise,” CEO Jeff Green said on the call. “It is my understanding that Amazon nearly doubled the supply of Prime Video inventory in the recent months. That creates a number of conflicts.”

For the second quarter, The Trade Desk reported a 19% increase in year-over-year revenue to $694 million, topping the $685 million estimate, according to analysts polled by LSEG. Adjusted earnings per share of 41 cents beat estimates by a penny.

Looking to the third quarter, the Trump administration’s tariffs were also a theme, as the company forecast revenue of at least $717 million, representing growth of 14% at minimum.

“From a macro standpoint, some of the world’s largest brands are absolutely facing pressure and some amount of uncertainty,” Green said. “Some have to respond more than others to tariffs. Many are managing inflation worries and the related pricing that comes with that.”  

With Friday’s slump, The Trade Desk shares are now down 53% for the year, while the S&P 500 is up about 9%. The Trade Desk was added to the S&P 500 in June.

WATCH: Trade Desk shares sink

Trade Desk shares sink on tariff warning

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