Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

apnews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 373 posts

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

#271

Post by ranger_danger »

emidln wrote: post #20

My 2025 Mazda Miata has a CAN connected Telematics Control Unit that sends a bunch of data to Mazda on ignition off. Among this data is acceleration and velocity data along with coordinates sampled for where you were. It is also used as a gateway for the Mazda app to start your car, query your vehicle's tire pressure, etc. It is claimed that you can opt out of this by calling Mazda and being persistent. The CAN traff…

Can't you just turn off "Connected Services" in the menu?

I have been canceling that stupid warning message it presents when leaving it off, every day for several years now.

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

#272

Post by ranger_danger »

mattmaroon wrote: post #242
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…

Yeah that’s great if you’re a CIA intelligence officer but what normal person can do this and still function in the modern world? Do the people who say this stuff leave their homes regularly? And what’s the benefit of it all? Fewer targeted ads?

> Do the people who say this stuff leave their homes regularly?

Nope.

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

#273

Post by otterley »

ericmay wrote: post #147

Nothing you can realistically do about it. In America car ownership for most people is mandatory. It’s unfortunate we don’t have alternatives if you disagree with car manufacturers extra “features”.

We could lobby together for new federal and state laws to prohibit this kind of tracking without the affirmative consent of the purchaser—or, at the very least, make opt-out as easy as sending an email.

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

#274

Post by amypetrik8 »

monerozcash wrote: post #248
BobbyTables2 wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guessing URLs is equivalent to ordering an item not on the menu in a restaurant. The request may or may not be granted.

This same logic is easily extended to SQL injection, or just about any other software vulnerability. How do you propose the line should be drawn?

>How do you propose the line should be drawn?

there is a line drawn for such things. a fuzzy line. see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it

same as this famous case, in which a supreme court justice is asked "what is and is not pronographie" - of course he realizes if he defines "what is not" people are going to make all kinds of porn right on the boundary (see: japanese pronographies where they do the filthiest imaginable things yet censor the sensitive books, making it SFW in the eyes of their law). this judge avoided that.

Anyways, parallel to the fact that filthy pronographies can be made a gorillion different ways, a "hack" may be manifested also a gorillion different ways. Itemizing such ways would be pointless. And also in the same vein, strictly defining a black and white line "this is legal, this is not" would cause hackers to freely exploit and cheese the legal aspect as hard as possible.. businesses and data miners and all these people would also freely exploit it, at massive scale and with massive funding, since it is officially legal. Thusly it must be kept an ambiguous definition as with pronographies, as with many things

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

#275

Post by kwoff »

ProllyInfamous wrote: post #69
exhilaration wrote: post #41

Disabling the hardware can be really hard, my 2025 Toyota Sienna is always connected. You can't just pull a fuse or rip out an antenna, I have to take the entire dashboard apart to reach the Data Communication Module (DCM) module. If anyone's curious what that looks like, it's a little bit easier on the Toyota Tacoma, here are some pictures of the process: https://www.tacoma4g.com/forum/threads/disabling-dcm-telemat.…

On a 2021 Camry there is an below-dash fuse labeled "DCM" which you can remove (and it does disable OnStar/telemetry, but not sat.radio[0]) — it also disables one of the speakers (used for phone calls), which there is a bypass to resolve (but it still requires removing infotainment, so at that point just unplug it there.?!). [0] It was my understanding that, like GPS-receivers, Sirius/XM was one-way streaming, only..…

https://www.toyota.com/privacyvts/#:~:text=Declining,analysi... so you apparently have to opt-out of consenting to them tracking you...

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

#277

Post by MrDrMcCoy »

drnick1 wrote: post #170
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.

It's easier than that, you can remove the cellular modem. Dealers won't generally accept to make this mod, but any independent shop should be able to. There are also plenty of videos on YT to DIY.

I some months back called every independent EV mechanic I could find a listing for in my state to see if they would help me disable the cellular modem of any of the models I was interested in buying, and they mostly told me either that they couldn't or wouldn't. One of the more polite shops I got in touch with explained that many models don't have a separate board that can be disabled anymore, or otherwise have more things on the board that need to be talking on the CAN bus for other, actually important parts of the car to function. As such, I still have my old car.

Since then, I've learned about the 50ohm dummy antennas you can buy. I might try that if my car dies before an AWD/4WD Slate truck becomes an option, and also if my living situation can accommodate charging.

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

#278

Post by MrDrMcCoy »

meisel wrote: post #133

It wouldn’t be surprising if cars also record audio of conversations to use for ad targeting. It has already been conclusively shown that TV companies have done this.

IIRC, Nissan even has a clause in their privacy policy for selling information about passengers having sex. Pretty hard to collect that without audio data.

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

#279

Post by MrDrMcCoy »

effnorwood wrote: post #243

Remove the modem

Not always possible, depending on model, skill level, and/or availability of a mechanic that's willing to try. My own search for a mechanic to mod any of the cars I was looking at buying was fruitless and left me with the decision to hold onto my gas guzzler for a while longer.

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

#280

Post by wakawaka28 »

vkou wrote: post #260
wakawaka28 wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Passwords are different from URLs because URLs are basically public, whereas passwords aren't supposed to be. Furthermore, this is not 1995. Everyone who is in the industry providing IT services is supposed to know that basic security measures are necessary. The physical analogy would be, walking through an unlocked and unmarked door that faces the street in a busy city, versus picking a lock on that door and then wa…

> Everyone who is in the industry providing IT services is supposed to know that basic security measures are necessary. And everyone who doesn't have wool for brains knows to not carry large rolls of cash around in a bad part of town, but we can still hold the mugger at fault.

Nevertheless, URLs are as public as door knobs. If someone is merely observing that a door is unlocked and they have not stolen anything, they have done nothing wrong. People being prosecuted over discovery and disclosure of horrible design flaws based on URLs should never be prosecuted. If they use the information to actually cause damage, we can be in agreement that they are responsible for the damage.
Post reply on HN