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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

#171

Post by closewith »

ryandrake wrote: post #94
closewith wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did do this, but I also want a reasonable modern and safe car and in the EU, since 2018, that means a car with eCall. I have a 2017 that I will keep going as long as is economical, but after that, it will be nearly impossible to avoid these systems.

The idea that a 20 year old car is unsafe is auto industry FUD. Yes, there have been great safety advances since the 1970s and 1980s. They've kind of tapered off though. I would absolutely trust my family's lives in any year 2000+ vehicle.

> I would absolutely trust my family's lives in any year 2000+ vehicle.

I work partly in prehospital emergency medicine and I wouldn't.

I already feel uneasy with our 2017 EuroNCAP 5 star SUV due to the improvements since then, in particular AEB and increased structural crash-protection, which greatly change the injury profiles of accidents.

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

#172

Post by m463 »

> The first thing drivers should do is be aware of what data their car is collecting

> You can opt out

lol

this makes it seem so simple.

I think

- you will never be aware of what data is collected - they want to collect more data and never disclose it

- you will never be able to opt-out. Even if you disconnect from cellular, at service time they will just download what is there.

- car manufacturers will use any and all data to their benefit

You know, here's an interesting story I remember reading:

I will give you a story - buddy owns a shop - buys new M5 - he went out joyriding - warped a rotor - he said it was not from him so he tried a warranty service - BMW printed a page that his car recorded. It had snapped a pic of his face and sent all the data on speed, location, etc every bit of data you can think of to the dealer and his insurance company. He sold the car. That was years ago. Ask any custom tuner today if they can touch a 22 BMW. Nope. It will disable the car if you try and get into the CPU to tune it. This is where the industry is heading

from: https://www.fordtremor.com/threads/disabling-the-modem-pulli...

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

#173

Post by drnick1 »

elzbardico wrote: post #142

Cars, your TV, your phone, everything is fucking spying on you. At this moment I am more interested in how I generate a tsunami of more data about me to the powers that be to drown them in a deluge of irrelevant bits.

Yes, and that's very sad. However the solutions are pretty obvious:

Car -> unplug the cellular modem (more or less easy)

TV -> used as dumb monitor with a Linux HTPC

Phone -> GrapheneOS

PC -> Linux

Social media -> /dev/null

Email/DNS/cloud -> my own

The real issue is that most people are not aware of these issues and may even (unintentionally) compromise your own privacy by posting information or pictures of you to Facebook or other similar places.

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

#174

Post by [deleted] »

mindslight wrote: post #77
emidln wrote: post #59

Earlier 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]…

[deleted]

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

#175

Post by blackjack_ »

I ripped the wifi / onstar and gps antennas out of my 2020 Chevy Bolt the day after I bought it. Took me a couple of hours since the access was awful, but that's one time pain. No issues since, and I have a phone I use to drive the head unit so there was no need for those antennas to even exist.

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

#177

Post by ghaff »

cwillu wrote: post #106
add-sub-mul-div wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And even in most of those metros (OK. Leave aside Manhattan), not having a car tends to imply a lot of lifestyle choices in terms of activities, visiting friends outside of the metro, etc.

There are certainly people who are OK with living like they did in their urban school for a few years after graduation. But that's not a long-term solution for most people.

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

#178

Post by vkou »

emidln wrote: post #81
mindslight wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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]…

If you can be prosecuted for guessing urls you can be prosecuted for sending garbage data in a way you know will be uploaded to a remote system.

You think criminalizing guessing URLs is unreasonable.

What about guessing passwords? Should someone be prosecuted for just trying to bruteforce them until one works?

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

#179

Post by m463 »

teeray wrote: post #91
chasing0entropy wrote: post #17

Remove the antennas. Do not give in to the mirage of convenience. Use a stand alone generic GPS. Vehicle GPS devices are anti privacy for so many reasons. Listen to stored music from an SD card if terrestrial radio (NO SATELLITE). Did you know almost ALL late model cars can play a TURN YOUR PHONE OFF. Your phone does more than track you - the Bluetooth and wifi beacon scanners are always running. When you come across…

> Remove the antennas. Do not give in to the mirage of convenience. ERROR: unable to start engine.

Please drink a verification can.

Actually I wonder if cars will just adopt "oh-you-need-anti-theft" like phones do. To prevent auto theft, all cars will be tracked and all parts must match serial numbers.

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

#180

Post by m463 »

encom wrote: post #68
chasing0entropy wrote: post #17

Remove the antennas. Do not give in to the mirage of convenience. Use a stand alone generic GPS. Vehicle GPS devices are anti privacy for so many reasons. Listen to stored music from an SD card if terrestrial radio (NO SATELLITE). Did you know almost ALL late model cars can play a TURN YOUR PHONE OFF. Your phone does more than track you - the Bluetooth and wifi beacon scanners are always running. When you come across…

>Do not give in to the mirage of convenience. I sympathise. However, being able to start de-icing my car while still in bed at 5:30 on a January morning is a powerful feature. And I'm the kind of person who wraps his tin foil hat no less than 10 layers thick. Ideally this shouldn't involve the internet, because the car is in wifi range, but what can I do about it?

I have this with my keyfob.

later vehicles "helpfully" removed this in favor of online remote starting (with added telematics)

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