Many of us know how bad modern cars are for privacy. Yet many of our friends and neighbors do not realize how intrusive it really is. I linked a blog entry from Mozilla’s investigation about car privacy. In that blog is a link to their make-by-make analysis. The amount of very intimate information a modern car collects is honestly appalling. It includes health data, real time mood information, weight gain or loss, and so on. And it does so even for passengers.
The web has many resources talking about this problem, but almost no resources on what to do about it. I know the simple thing is to say, “just drive an old car bro!” That’s fine if you can, but not everyone can. Also it has drawbacks like more maintenance. Sometimes less safety if it’s older than certain safety features. For the purpose of this thread, it is more interesting to focus on newer, surveillance enabled cars which are the majority of what people drive on the road today.
Some people have figured out how to bypass the surveillance package on some cars. One way is to uncouple the antenna it uses to phone home. Other times you can bypass the telematics module or remove a fuse that powers it. I feel like we really need a central model by model repository of information.
Past that, how do we prove it has worked, if we do it? Has anyone reading this tried to use an RF detector to see if their car is still trying to phone home, after they have bypassed telematics? What are your experiences? I want to buy one and use it to test my own car, but the info on the web seems sketch.
Aside: don’t buy into the myth that older cars need more maintenance or cost more to maintain. Its an excellent sales pitch to convince people to keep upgrading but it’s not always reality. Modern cars can easily cost more to repair and maintain than older cars because more technology = more that can break. Car manufacturers have, over time, crammed more and more proprietary parts into cars which they can then charge exorbitant amounts for and force you to use their mechanics rather than your local.
I have both an 25+ year old Toyota that’s still going strong and still only needs basic maintenance (parts are also easily available and cheap). I also have an ‘older’ Nissan Leaf EV that is very little maintenance and has nothing in it that reports back to Nissan. It’s got a nice balance of technology and most things we can maintain or repair ourselves if we want. Parts for this are also easily accessible and cheap.
I also highly recommend people learn more vehicle maintenance themselves (easier of older cars with less tech) so you can either do things yourself and/or you’ve got more knowledge yo protect yourself from mechanics and car dealers who try to scam you by repairing/replacing things that don’t need it.
I wish there was a solution for this, but it sounds like the only way to fix the problem is regulation.
Good luck with that, we can’t bribe this administration as well as the auto lobby can.
I mostly agree. But sometimes if a single jurisdiction gets regulation in place, it can be cheaper for companies to produce a single model to comply with all of them, rather than make multiple models. Even if they do make multiple models, it still means there is a supply of privacy-spec cars.
California in the USA has been more privacy friendly than most states. If California would crank up some car privacy regs, maybe work with the Europeans and Canada on a common legal standard, that is a huge foot in the door! It means people in other US states could buy a California-spec car. If the momentum builds enough, maybe companies would say screw it and sell the privacy-spec cars everywhere. That happened in the past with car safety regs. It went from auto companies whining about it, to the same companies featuring it as a selling point. Look how well our cars do in crash tests!
I agree car privacy is going to be a hard fight. Auto companies will fight dirty to avoid privacy regs. But we can push on this. A groundswell of public support can’t hurt.
I don’t have the time or energy but if someone wanted to create a database with all the known ways to disconnect cars from relaying data for everything known searchable by make/model/year they’d be pretty fucking awesome.
Just bought a '22 Bolt because there was a guide to terminate its 4g antenna here: https://imgur.com/gallery/step-by-step-guide-to-disable-onstar-on-2022-chevy-bolt-this-is-reversible-not-permanent-n00QKnH
Some vehicles have privacy policies you can opt out of. What I’d like to know is if that works.
I was able to opt out with Toyota for them selling my driving data and for them sending my data to the dealership. I was not able to opt out of the ATT LTE connection because ATT sent me in circles on their automated system and then kept hanging up on me.
I’m pretty new to Lemmy and noticed that my post was crossposted to fuckcars and privacy@programming.dev. I have no problem with that, but I didn’t do it on purpose!
Fun fact: at least one of the fuckcars mods cares deeply about this issue, to the point that he only owns older cars to avoid telemetry.
(Source: it’s me, I’m that mod.)
Anyway, don’t be shy; feel free to crosspost on-topic stuff like this there yourself if you want!
Spoiler: Not a single brand received Mozilla’s Best Of designation, though researchers identified Renault as the least problematic. The European brand must comply with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a stringent law governing the way in which personal data is used, processed, and stored.
