I have an electric car and if I want to remotely turn on charging, it won’t allow me unless the full data sharing option is enabled. Full data as in your driving data like a black box logger. I then have to go in the car, enable it, then I can remotely turn on charging. I have to remember to opt-out again later. Ironic I know because I can turn on charging from within the cabin without having to enable any of the data collection. What an inconvenient experience.
Modern cars are spying on you. Here's what you can do about it
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Re: Modern cars are spying on you. Here's what you can do about it
#102There is spying and there is spying Back in august IDF banned Chinese cars from entering bases https://www.jns.org/report-idf-bans-chinese-cars-from-bases-... And now banned then from used by officers https://securityboulevard.com/2025/11/why-israel-just-banned... I wonder what IDF knows
Tesla cars to be banned from Chinese government buildings amid security fears. I wonder what China knows :) https://www.drive.com.au/news/tesla-vehicles-to-face-entry-b...
At consumer level - Tesla has been leader here for many years.
Re: Modern cars are spying on you. Here's what you can do about it
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The CAN traffic is unencrypted. It was pretty easy to MITM this module with a cheap arm Linux board And you didn't poison their databases and statistics with fake data?? OMG, I'm thinking of buying one of these cars just for this opportunity! (No, I'm not.)
I suspect this data is made "anonymous" and sold to insurance companies and misc data brokers. If it's linked to my insurance company, I don't want to jack my rates. Further, I've thus far avoided a CFAA conviction and I'd like to keep it that way.
As anonymous as there are Miatas in your neighborhood parking in your driveway.
Re: Modern cars are spying on you. Here's what you can do about it
#104Is there anything we can do about it short of avoiding new cars? Our legislators have proven unwilling to pass real privacy laws.
In my BYD Seal, I removed the SIM card that's easily accessible from inside the armrest compartment.
Re: Modern cars are spying on you. Here's what you can do about it
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
I suspect this data is made "anonymous" and sold to insurance companies and misc data brokers. If it's linked to my insurance company, I don't want to jack my rates. Further, I've thus far avoided a CFAA conviction and I'd like to keep it that way.
It would be an extremely totalitarian dynamic to be persecuted with the CFAA for modifying a device you own based on part of it having been (nonconsensually!) programmed by a third party to upload data to their own server. You own the device, so anything you do within that device is authorized. And the code that uploads the data is authorized to do so because it was put there by the same company that owns [controls]…
Prosecuting someone for deliberately injecting garbage data into another persons system hardly seems totalitarian.
> You own the device, so anything you do within that device is authorized
You're very clearly describing a situation where at least some of the things you're doing aren't happening on your own device.
>I do know that the CFAA essentially gets interpreted to mean whatever the corpos want it to mean - it's basically an anti-witch law
FWIW this is simply not true. The essence of the CFAA is "do not deliberately do anything bad to computers that belong to other people".
The supreme court even recently tightened the definition of "unauthorized access" to ensure that you can't play silly games with terms of service and the CFAA. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/19-783_k53l.pdf
Re: Modern cars are spying on you. Here's what you can do about it
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because as soon as you leave a major metropolitan area, not having a car is almost a nonstarter.
Over 100 million people live in just the top 20 metro areas alone. It's hardly an edge case.
And _not_ living in one of the top 20 metro areas is also hardly an edge case.
Re: Modern cars are spying on you. Here's what you can do about it
#107Amazingly but perhaps not surprisingly, cars in the EU do similar amounts of spying on you, but the EU is silent. Car manufacturers pretty much run the EU.
Re: Modern cars are spying on you. Here's what you can do about it
#108I wonder what the extremely rich do to get a car that isn’t a security risk? I’ve heard you can throw money at high end car dealerships to disable spying, but I wonder what the internal process is.
Re: Modern cars are spying on you. Here's what you can do about it
#109I wonder what the extremely rich do to get a car that isn’t a security risk? I’ve heard you can throw money at high end car dealerships to disable spying, but I wonder what the internal process is.
I haven't heard this. Do you have any examples?