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Removing the modem and GPS from my 2024 RAV4 hybrid

arkadiyt.com

341–350 of 605 posts

Re: Removing the modem and GPS from my 2024 RAV4 hybrid

#341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know? Most of these are cloud connected, how do you know they aren't storing license plate information, or face data, or audio data for extended periods of time in the cloud?

Are you implying that we shouldn't be annoyed at Flock and forced GPS tracking in cars because my ignorant neighbours have a cloud connected doorbell? Because I am instead annoyed at all three. Not necessarily my neighbours, but the companies selling this spyware.

That is not what I'm suggesting at all, what?

Re: Removing the modem and GPS from my 2024 RAV4 hybrid

#342
post #27

> Unfortunately I think it’s only a matter of time before the modem and GPS become more deeply integrated into the car (making this blog post infeasible), or cars have more drastic failure modes when the modem/GPS is removed, or anti-right-to-repair laws get passed to further clamp down on this behavior. Guaranteed

It's for the safety of the children.

Re: Removing the modem and GPS from my 2024 RAV4 hybrid

#343
post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know? Most of these are cloud connected, how do you know they aren't storing license plate information, or face data, or audio data for extended periods of time in the cloud?

Nothing comes for free, so what's the profit angle to do this? Government is the obvious customer, but that would leave a papertrail too if such deals were worked out especially asking for perpetual storage until the heat death of the universe.

The cost comes from your tax. Surveillance has an unlimited budget.

You can store an ungodly amount of data if you convert everything to metadata, e.g store a face picture for a short period of time, create a hash to match against other faces in the database. Same with license plates.

Using the metadata alone could effectively completely track your whereabouts.

Re: Removing the modem and GPS from my 2024 RAV4 hybrid

#344
post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't had any insight into the industry lately, but did work for a company in that space several years ago. Most (all?) ordinary TVs, plus things like Roku streaming devices, are sold essentially at-cost. The profit comes from ads and information-brokering stuff. This makes it basically impossible to break into the market without doing the same thing.

What you describe is a business decision. Different products exist at different price points to cater to different customers. If you want to sell a subsidized product with the implication that there will be ads, that’s one business strategy, but to say that it’s not viable to have a higher end product that will not sell the user data because it’s not commercially viable is something I’ll have disagree with. Computer…

It’s a business decision, but one of the options won’t move enough units to keep Wal-Mart and Target and Costco and Best Buy using shelf space for your product, and the other might.

Re: Removing the modem and GPS from my 2024 RAV4 hybrid

#346
post #5

> Even after the modem is removed, if you connect your phone to the car via Bluetooth then the car will use your phone as an internet connection and send all the same telemetry data back to Toyota. However, if you use a wired USB connection then it does not do that (see the discussion here and elsewhere), so I exclusively use CarPlay via USB. The problem with this is that both carplay and android auto capture their o…

A 12v bluetooth to FM transmitter can at least give you tunes and a speaker phone feature.

Re: Removing the modem and GPS from my 2024 RAV4 hybrid

#347

I'm still just refusing to buy this garbage in the first place. All these car manufacturers pushing this horrorshow deserve to go under. Tbh it looks like most will soon....

Which car manufacturers are not pushing this garbage?

Re: Removing the modem and GPS from my 2024 RAV4 hybrid

#348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And once you've gotten rid of Google and Apple, your telecom company tracks you, your CC payments help track you and even cameras in public do. It's hard to not want to throw your hands in the air screaming "whatever" when almost everything you use in public is somehow used to track you either as you move around, or in the future.

> your CC payments help track Not only that. Them and the point-of-sale vendors (aptly shortened PoS), sell that data. They tend to attempt to do this anonymized. How successful they are in anonymizing that is very much so up for debate. The websites (and even their retail locations) you buy from send your purchase data to meta and other advertisers directly via APIs so they can better track their marketing conversio…

> They tend to attempt to do this anonymized. How successful they are in anonymizing that is very much so up for debate.

Yeah I think the big thing to push or talk about is that there is no such thing as "anonymized".

There's only such as a thing as "can only be identified as X many people". Like for a given dataset you can make any data point correlated to 1 of say 50 people. If somebody is anonymizing data and they don't provide a k-anonmizity [1] you should just assume it's 1:1 and effectively not anonmized.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-anonymity

Re: Removing the modem and GPS from my 2024 RAV4 hybrid

#349

There's a fortune to be made for whomever produces a car that has minimal features, and and electric-drivetrain with onboard gasoline generator. No screens, knobs and buttons, no assists. Extra fortune if you can licence designs and revive some of the old-and-loved classics with new safety features.

A screen for the back-up camera is federally required for new cars in the US, afaik. But using the screen for additional purposes is still optional... for now...

Re: Removing the modem and GPS from my 2024 RAV4 hybrid

#350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And once you've gotten rid of Google and Apple, your telecom company tracks you, your CC payments help track you and even cameras in public do. It's hard to not want to throw your hands in the air screaming "whatever" when almost everything you use in public is somehow used to track you either as you move around, or in the future.

Nonetheless I'll still try to maintain what privacy I can.

You do you, John C. Calhoun of Minerva Road, Springfield, CO.

An agent will be shortly with you to assist in that endeavor.

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