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Data collected by cars and sold to third parties

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Re: Data collected by cars and sold to third parties

#51
post #6

How can this be stopped, from a technical perspective? Can I wrap the comms in a Faraday cage? Obviously it would be better to have this action be illegal. But with legal privacy protections eroding in the US and other countries, it seems prudent to have a better understanding of the systems involved in the immoral surveillance.

I've had good luck with pulling service manuals, finding the telematics antenna connectors, and unplugging them. It's popular to pull the telematics module fuse, but that typically disables internal microphones and GPS that are used by android auto and carplay. This severely degrades features spouses expect to just work. The antenna pulling is a much lighter touch.

You should be using a 50 ohm 1 watt dummy load / termination. It's better at attenuating the signal than leaving the antenna unplugged.

Re: Data collected by cars and sold to third parties

#52

I posted a flavor of this comment on an article a few months ago, but it's relevant here: I have a seven year old Volkswagen, not financed. I'm security conscious and made sure to disable all the data collection I could find in the companion app before removing my account, turn off remote access services, dig through the infotainment to turn off what I could, etc. Last year I requested a Carfax on it, and one of the…

"Resistance is futile." See also: LG TVs, etc.

Re: Data collected by cars and sold to third parties

#53

I posted a flavor of this comment on an article a few months ago, but it's relevant here: I have a seven year old Volkswagen, not financed. I'm security conscious and made sure to disable all the data collection I could find in the companion app before removing my account, turn off remote access services, dig through the infotainment to turn off what I could, etc. Last year I requested a Carfax on it, and one of the…

Couldn't you put some sort of faraday cage around the antenna?

What happened to just pulling (the mfr's) sim card?

Re: Data collected by cars and sold to third parties

#54
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What sucks is that at least with my car, if you pull their access, you also lose all your remote access as well, and the ability to receive updates.

Why do you need remote access to your car? What updates does your car need?

It’s practical to see battery level so I can optimise the electricity price at which I charge it.

Although it wasn’t worth the cost of the 3 year subscription so I now just estimate the charge status based on the charge’s power consumption.

If the car is at 10% battery, it may be worth charging at .15 or .3€/kWh. If it’s at 70% charge, I’ll wait until the price drops to .005€/kWh. The whole thing is automated in HA.

Re: Data collected by cars and sold to third parties

#56

I posted a flavor of this comment on an article a few months ago, but it's relevant here: I have a seven year old Volkswagen, not financed. I'm security conscious and made sure to disable all the data collection I could find in the companion app before removing my account, turn off remote access services, dig through the infotainment to turn off what I could, etc. Last year I requested a Carfax on it, and one of the…

Try finding the fuse and pulling it. It will be in the manual.

Re: Data collected by cars and sold to third parties

#58

I posted a flavor of this comment on an article a few months ago, but it's relevant here: I have a seven year old Volkswagen, not financed. I'm security conscious and made sure to disable all the data collection I could find in the companion app before removing my account, turn off remote access services, dig through the infotainment to turn off what I could, etc. Last year I requested a Carfax on it, and one of the…

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Re: Data collected by cars and sold to third parties

#60
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simple: don't own a vehicle with this capability.

Much like owning a home without an HOA attached, it is becoming harder and harder to meet this requirement. It also seems to conflict with `right-to-repair` laws if the capability is legally required.

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