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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

#111

Post by nimbius »

as a professional diesel mechanic for a small chain of midwest shops, this "telematics" feature is on long-haul trucks as well as tractors (john deer is notorious for using it to send mail marketing about services.)

generally its not hard to disable.

- identify the telematics module in your car - pull the fuse (not always an option, sometimes this disables bluetooth)

- alternatively: identify the 1-2 SMC connectors on the telematics device. this is the LTE and low/alt channel for the cellular communications. disconnect these 1-2 connectors and connect the ports instead to a 50 ohm terminator. the vehicle will simply continue to collect data but never be able to send it anywhere. the system will assume it just cant find a tower.

Re: Modern cars are spying on you. Here's what you can do about it

#112

Post by jeroenhd »

gruez wrote: post #65
CamperBob2 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's not connected to the internet, there is no issue. It's connected to the Internet. Every car has a SIM card now.

>It's connected to the Internet. Every car has a SIM card now. Maybe every new car, but the average car is 13 years old, and the OP made no clarification on whether his advice was for only new cars, or for a 2015 econobox as well.

My car is older than that and came with an embedded SIM card. Quite a few navigation consoles had "live traffic updates" (often in trial format, but sometimes "lifetime") that basically consisted of 2G clients occasionally updating traffic data along planned routes. Not quite bottom of the line at the time, but also not uncommon at that point either. It's probably slightly worse than the dedicated satnav screens people were buying back when the car was new, although neither compares to what a smartphone will expose passively from just being inside of a moving car.

Re: Modern cars are spying on you. Here's what you can do about it

#113

Post by mixmastamyk »

J_Shelby_J wrote: post #108

I 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.

This will probably be a thing, but it's not clear that folks are cognizant of the risks yet.

Re: Modern cars are spying on you. Here's what you can do about it

#114

Post by mixmastamyk »

hbarka wrote: post #101

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 dat…

What does "remotely turn on charging" mean? Doesn't charge when you plug in?

Re: Modern cars are spying on you. Here's what you can do about it

#115

Post by Zigurd »

chneu wrote: post #53
DonHopkins wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ride a bike.

Not possible when things are 10+ mile apart and a general grocery run takes 3+ hours and you can't carry more than a backpack, so you have to do it multiple times a week.

The US is ripe for an e-bike revolution. The distances, the wide roads with plenty of room for bike lanes, and the revulsion against things like Flock...

Unfortunately it's as likely as this being the year of the Linux desktop because Windows 11.

Re: Modern cars are spying on you. Here's what you can do about it

#116

Post by baobun »

encom wrote: post #71
chasing0entropy wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes - remove the telematics radio and GPS antennas. They are usually in the overhead console area around/behind the lighting and mirror controls. In BMWs, the gps antenna is behind the upper lights, the telematics and V2V antenna is in the sharkfin(unplug it from underneath the headliner)

But what's the point if you're just going to use Android Auto or Apple's car-thing instead? You're just letting some other company invade your privacy.

Assuming things much? It's actually totally reasonable to opt out of both of those, too.

Then on the other hand, who cares about those when your car is already tracking you? /s That kind of helpless reasoning needs to die.

Re: Modern cars are spying on you. Here's what you can do about it

#117

Post by vel0city »

add-sub-mul-div wrote: post #54
JoeBOFH wrote: post #29

Earlier 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.

A massive chunk (if not majority?) of those top 20 metro areas are largely car dependent for most of their populations. Large areas don't have any public transit at all, and the rest is often designed to be actively hostile to pedestrians.

Try living without a car in these places, all in the 4th largest MSA.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/mHmGidZRJaKptHeL8

https://maps.app.goo.gl/5P4mW5iM6b5ab9Ve7

https://maps.app.goo.gl/JCiBgESKs5ZWqGny8

https://maps.app.goo.gl/E1iVwLCB28ooGhQL9

These are all in "urban" areas and a part of DFW. But how about Houston, the 5th?

https://maps.app.goo.gl/7yEAimERmyE1EGde6

https://maps.app.goo.gl/UKSQjPqifWUSv82H7

I don't know how one would even get groceries without a car.

And even then, you're then talking about less than 1/3 of Americans living in that mostly car dependent space.

Re: Modern cars are spying on you. Here's what you can do about it

#118

Post by pfp »

I thought about getting a traditional navigator to avoid even relying on phone navigation.

Well, of course all the Garmins and Tomtoms available now have "built-in wifi for updates" and often BT for phone notifications too. Sure, I could just not configure either but what if I want a navigator _without any radios_ and with controlled updates via SD card.

Maybe a dedicated Android phone in the car with offline OpenStreetMaps installed and airplane mode on is more realistic. Or some old 2nd hand navi that's still updateable.

Re: Modern cars are spying on you. Here's what you can do about it

#119

Post by everdrive »

mindslight wrote: post #78
SoftTalker wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check your tire pressures when you get gas, along with your oil and other fluid levels. Eyeball the tires every time you get in the car. These habits are not hard to develop and they will work even when the sensors malfunction (which is not infrequently). All that these sensor-based systems do is train you to be an inattentive car owner.

Throughout my entire life, I don't know if I have ever seen anyone measuring their tire pressure or checking their oil at a gas station. Visually assessing tires can be quite misleading as well - my TPMS indicator was just on, visually it looked like one tire (its pressure was fine), and the tire that was 10psi low looked normal. Falling back to an attitude of not needing automation and instrumentation is a cope , an…

>Falling back to an attitude of not needing automation and instrumentation is a cope, and often a poor cope at that.

A lot of modern automation is not really automation. A washing machine is automation: it takes a task which would have wasted hours of your day and reduces it down to a few minutes. A lot of modern "automation" doesn't save you any actual time time, but just saves you from being attentive:

- Checking your tire pressure doesn't take much time, but TPMS is a privacy problem and an added maintenance cost that you cannot opt out of.

- A power rear lift gate actually takes _more_ time than just shutting it with your hands.

- Power windows don't go down any more quickly than power windows. The only only benefit here is that you can open all 4 windows simultaneously. However this is a luxury, not something which saves you time. You never _need_ all 4 windows down. So maybe people like it, but it's not like the washing machine that actually saves you labor.

- etc ....

People think that needed to do or attend to anything is wasting time, but often modern automation saves no time whatsoever, and has other downsides. (privacy, maintenance cost, vehicle weight, etc.)

Re: Modern cars are spying on you. Here's what you can do about it

#120

Post by rconti »

I think it's wild that people spend their own money to surveil themselves every second they're near their car. Maybe I've seen too much lawyering on TV and in movies, but if I'm in a collision with you, I'm definitely asking the cops to pull the SD card from your dashcam.

Whenever I point out I think this self-surveillance is crazy, the response ends up sounding something like "oh, no big, if I think I did something wrong I'll just hide the evidence and lie to the police and say it doesn't work", which sure doesn't sit right with me.

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