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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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Bitcoin rises to fresh record above $112,000, helped by Nvidia-led tech rally

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Bitcoin rises to fresh record above 2,000, helped by Nvidia-led tech rally

The logo of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin can be seen on a coin in front of a Bitcoin chart.

Silas Stein | Picture Alliance | Getty Images

Bitcoin hit a fresh record on Wednesday afternoon as an Nvidia-led rally in equities helped push the price of the cryptocurrency higher into the stock market close.

The price of bitcoin was last up 1.9%, trading at $110,947.49, according to Coin Metrics. Just before 4:00 p.m. ET, it hit a high of $112,052.24, surpassing its May 22 record of $111,999.

The flagship cryptocurrency has been trading in a tight range for several weeks despite billions of dollars flowing into bitcoin exchange traded funds. Bitcoin purchases by public companies outpaced ETF inflows in the second quarter. Still, bitcoin is up just 2% in the past month.

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Bitcoin climbs above $112,000

On Wednesday, tech stocks rallied as Nvidia became the first company to briefly touch $4 trillion in market capitalization. In the same session, investors appeared to shrug off the latest tariff developments from President Donald Trump. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite notched a record close.

While institutions broadly have embraced bitcoin’s “digital gold” narrative, it is still a risk asset that rises and falls alongside stocks depending on what’s driving investor sentiment. When the market is in risk-on mode and investors buy growth-oriented assets like tech stocks, bitcoin and crypto tend to rally with them.

Investors have been expecting bitcoin to reach new records in the second half of the year as corporate treasuries accelerate their bitcoin buying sprees and Congress gets closer to passing crypto legislation.

Don’t miss these cryptocurrency insights from CNBC Pro:

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Perplexity launches AI-powered web browser for select group of subscribers

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Perplexity launches AI-powered web browser for select group of subscribers

Dado Ruvic | Reuters

Perplexity AI on Wednesday launched a new artificial intelligence-powered web browser called Comet in the startup’s latest effort to compete in the consumer internet market against companies like Google and Microsoft.

Comet will allow users to connect with enterprise applications like Slack and ask complex questions via voice and text, according to a brief demo video Perplexity released on Wednesday.

The browser is available to Perplexity Max subscribers, and the company said invite-only access will roll out to a waitlist over the summer. Perplexity Max costs users $200 per month.

“We built Comet to let the internet do what it has been begging to do: to amplify our intelligence,” Perplexity wrote in a blog post on Wednesday.

Perplexity is best known for its AI-powered search engine that gives users simple answers to questions and links out to the original source material on the web. After the company was accused of plagiarizing content from media outlets, it launched a revenue-sharing model with publishers last year.

In May, Perplexity was in late-stage talks to raise $500 million at a $14 billion valuation, a source familiar confirmed to CNBC. The startup was also approached by Meta earlier this year about a potential acquisition, but the companies did not finalize a deal.

“We will continue to launch new features and functionality for Comet, improve experiences based on your feedback, and focus relentlessly–as we always have–on building accurate and trustworthy AI that fuels human curiosity,” Perplexity said Wednesday.

WATCH: Perplexity CEO on AI race: The market of providing answers to questions will become a commodity

Perplexity CEO on AI race: The market of providing answers to questions will become a commodity

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Retailers log $7.9 billion in online sales in first 24 hours of Prime Day

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Retailers log .9 billion in online sales in first 24 hours of Prime Day

A worker sorts packages on Amazon Prime Day in New York on July 8, 2025.

Klaus Galiano | Bloomberg | Getty Images

U.S. online sales jumped 9.9% year over year to $7.9 billion on Tuesday, the kickoff of Amazon‘s Prime Day megasale, according to Adobe Analytics.

At that level, it marks the “single biggest e-commerce day so far this year,” Adobe said. It also eclipsed total online spending during Thanksgiving last year, when sales on the holiday reached $6.1 billion.

Amazon’s Prime Day bargain blitz began on Tuesday and lasts through Friday. The event, first launched in 2015 as a way to hook new Prime members, has pushed other retailers to launch counterprogramming.

Walmart‘s six-day deals event also started Tuesday, while Target Circle Week kicked off on Sunday and Best Buy launched a Black Friday in July promotion that began Monday.

Home and outdoor goods showed signs of strong demand during the first day of Amazon’s discount event, said Kashif Zafar, CEO of Xnurta, an advertising platform that serves more than 20,000 online businesses.

Read more CNBC Amazon coverage

Other historically well-performing categories such as beauty and household essentials saw softer demand early on, but could see demand pick up as Prime Day continues, he added.

“Early Prime Day numbers might look soft compared to last year’s surge, but it’s too early to call the event a miss,” Zafar said in an email. “With four days instead of two, we’re seeing a different rhythm, consumers are spreading out their purchases.”

Adobe expects online sales to reach $23.8 billion across all retailers during the 96-hour event, a level that’s “equivalent to two Black Fridays.”

U.S. online shoppers spent $14.2 billion during the 48-hour Prime Day event last year, according to Adobe.

This year’s Prime Day is landing at an uncertain time for retailers and consumers as they grapple with the fallout of President Donald Trump‘s unpredictable tariff policies.

U.S. consumer confidence worsened in June after improving in May as Americans remained concerned about the tariffs’ effect on the economy and prices, according to the Conference Board.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said last month the company hasn’t seen prices “appreciably go up” on its site as a result of tariffs.

Some third-party sellers previously told CNBC they were considering raising or had already raised the price of some of their products manufactured in China as the cost of tariffs became burdensome.

Don’t miss these insights from CNBC PRO

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