I wanted to get others’ takes but it seems like the only real way to get a non-spying car is to get an older car without any sort of telemetrics. I saw a video about different car companies’ security policies, well specifically the new Mental Outlaw video, and it just blew me away how even our cars aren’t safe. Anyone got tips for how to anonymize their car?
Let me try this comment again.
There is no driving with privacy or anonymity unless you’re on private land.
Anyone got tips for how to anonymize their car?
Remove the license plate. You will rarely have privacy driving a car on a public road. You should disable the modem, of course, but you’re still not going to be driving anonymously or privately. Automated license plate readers means your travels are going into databases that very well could be breached at some point in time.
Law enforcement use of ALPRs is rapidly expanding, with tens of thousands of readers in use throughout the United States; one survey indicates that in 2016 and 2017 alone, 173 law enforcement agencies collectively scanned 2.5 billion license plates.
According to the latest available numbers from the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, 93 percent of police departments in cities with populations of 1 million or more use their own ALPR systems, some of which can scan nearly 2,000 license plates per minute. In cities with populations of 100,000 or more, 75 percent of police departments use ALPR systems.
Despite this expansive data collection effort, many departments have not developed a policy to govern the use of ALPR technology, or provided privacy protections.
The fact that your data is exposed to someone doesn’t mean that you have to give up and just let everyone else have it as well.
That’s not the point I’m making. You should disable your cars modem if it has one, but you still should have no expectation of privacy. Thinking you can have anonymity with a license plate displayed to everyone is foolish. It’s like asking how to be anonymous while wearing a name tag and the same clothes every day.
Adding to this, automatic plate flippers exist and are pretty popular for show cars to display something else when parked. Typically wired to ignition so it shows your plate only when the cars running.
Issue is if you street park dependent on the state, if the vehicle registration is hidden by the plate being flipped they can likely tow it. Would work great for at work/in your driveway though. Could maybe just have a bypass switch for if you need to park somewhere and display the plate.
Still a pain in the ass that it’s this bad though.
Theyre also recording the make model car type car size etc so you’re still not immune from fingerprinting
I’ve got a 2009 dumb car and I am babying it because I dread having to try to buy a new to me car that isn’t full of telemetrics and other modern car garbage.
Learn how to work on it
I already do. I’m no mechanic, but I’ve made numerous repairs over the years and am familiar with and can do basic car maintenance.
ITT people are all dismissive because you can’t actually be anonymous on the road (license plates, speed cameras…), but, honestly, I just want a car that doesn’t listen in on my conversations, sell my data to brokers, require any passanger to accept the privacy policy, or record the times I have sex (jk it won’t be able to if I don’t have any)
Mozilla Foundation did a deep dive into this. And the results where abysmal. The only brands not completely horrifying where Renault/Dacia because they are European and only serve the European market so they have to follow GDPR.
Wait, Renault doesn’t ship anything outside the EU?
It does, to India.
Nice to know
Holding onto my 2016 van with zero telemetry for as long as possible.
The problem with the “just buy old cars” is that I want a used electric car for like $10k.
We need a wiki of EVs that.has a section on each model enumerating which components are used to spy on you and videos showing how to neuter them.
We need a wiki of EVs that.has a section on each model enumerating which components are used to spy on you and videos showing how to neuter them.
I have been thinking we need something like this but for all new vehicles, not just EVs. Like instructables but for how to locate and rip out the cellular radio/antenna on every make and model that has one.
Definitely. But its more complicated than that.
My understanding is that many cars store the information airgapped and then upload it to the dealer when the mechanic pluggs into the car doing routine service checks.
So we need the wireless/radio neutering, but also someone needs to hook up to the car and see if/what data can be leaked via hard wire. And possibly find ways to disable the sensors, send random/nonsense data, update the software to not store sensitve data, automatically wipe the data every time the car turns on, or at least document how to manually wipe the data when you pull into the shop for maintenance.
Oof, yeah, didn’t think about that. Much more complicated.
Exactly. Like I got a new android phone last week and I want to make it more.private. I want be afraid of making mistakes. Any mistake I can do can be undone.
Yeah fortunately there’s tons of info on the internet on how to security harden phones. Its down to a science
Hardening cars is wild west right now.
Hardening cars is wild west right now.
The cars should not need to be hardened. That is what needs to stop, imo!!
The best privacy from an EV is an electric bicycle
And then they’ll add the same tracking to them too.
My ebike comes with a GPS tracking app to locate it. Luckily it’s optional but it’s already begun
Not all. Bosch equipped ebikes send name/address when they get serviced.neither rad nor aventon have systems smart enough to record data at all. I dont think shimano ebikes are smart either.
Well, would be nice to be able to haul drywall and not get wet. There are some projects for this, but they’re a bit immature and documentation is lacking
You can haul a lot of weight by bike, especially if you use a trailer. How often do you really haul things? Just rent a panel van on days you want to move shit.
I live on a bicycle, but I’m going to be building a house soon, which is why I was looking at buying an EV.
An EV van has the same privacy issues, and we’re back at square 1
Yeah with EVs it seems like improving the privacy would be a pain, since they are reliant on parts of the digital system that is causing the privacy problem in the first place. I’m planning on sticking with a gen 3 Prius for awhile.
Are you sure the gen3 Prius doesn’t have these sensors and privacy issues? I had a gen2 Prius and that thing had loads of sensors everywhere.
I ask because I’m seriously considering buying a gen3 Prius. Do you have any resources you can link me to where researches actually did an audit of this car to see what info it collected and what was uploaded to Toyota or the mechanics?
I was driving in a rented car and just decided to start randomly singing and… yeah, the car’s AI asked me to repeat.
Cars have had GPS capable black boxes for a long time. They claim it is for the same reason as airplane black boxes, but I call bullshit on that.
Would be interesting if people demand their car modems disconnected enmasse contractually before they bought newer cars. Then have an independent mechanic confirm its disconnected or dealer pays out the arse. Make em think twice about this crap
It’s possible to get cars as new as 2019 where you can just pull a fuse. But it starts to get tricky.
Example my C7 Vette it only took about that (it was a bit of an ordeal to not brick the car) but it’s not connected to shit anymore.
Telemetry data will still be saved in the car systems, but not broadcast anywhere. So not too bad
Right to repair must apply to cars as well.
Cars are fascist, don’t drive one
I don’t recall what kind of car it was, but there was one that saved the phone number associated with any phone that connected via Bluetooth.
While I don’t think it’s likely as a way to trick people to connecting to get their phone number, it was a rental car which opened them up to impersonation scams. Knowing they just rented from the company and where in the city provides quite a bit of information on you.
Android has the ability to deny this information. If iOS has one it does jack shit because Apple doesn’t care about your privacy.
I have a 06 jeep wrangler, used to do 20 mpg but gets more around 15-17 now, which I plan on making some efficiency improvements. But its a pretty reliable engine and I live in a rural area so having an all terrain vehicle gives me some piece of mind.
If your planning on getting an older vehicle, do some preventative maintenance such as a new battery, make sure amps are equal or greater. Change the oil if it hasn’t been done. Get new belts. Get new spark plugs. Get a decent set of tires. Use fuel system cleaner.
If you plan on getting a newer vehicle you could probably pull a fuse to disable it from transmitting, but I don’t know if it would actually work.
Should be quite easy to remove any WiFi/cellular/satellite antennas from the car’s computer. (Might be trace/chip antennas, so make sure to get those). If you’re extra paranoid, get the GPS antenna too, so it can’t simply record data indefinitely.
Might take a few hours to go through the car to make sure you get everything, but you won’t be limited to super old cars.
I don’t believe for a second that the car won’t be sending either an unremovable error message, a constant and un-mute-able audible alarm, or a complete lockout of subsystems or the entire system itself. The best case scenario is that this is a mild inconvenience.
Does your car lock up outside of cell coverage? I’m not suggesting removing the radios themselves, just the antennas. To the car, it will just always be out of range.
The antenna used for talking to the keys might cause trouble, but those are either inherently short range inductive systems or are receivable using a 20$ RTL SDR to verify it’s not sending anything else.
Are there any write-ups on the situation in Europe under GDPR-legislation? Mostly I read about the US-situation which seems like the wild west, but I can’t imagine that it is perfectly fine in the EU either even if you opt-out of using their apps etc.
As long as data harvesting is legal and profitable, privacy will be a cat and mouse game. Gotta wonder how much capital and human effort is invested into all these anti-consumer innovations.
Depending on the car you might be able to physically disable telemetry. Here are some thoughts/ideas I’ve been collecting:
- Hit “SOS” button and opt-out of all services through customer service. This of course requires trusting the company to actually do it.
- It’s possible that the info could be stored locally and then uploaded when it gets serviced though
- Remove the fuse to the modem/data communication module (DCM)
- Disconnect wiring to the LTE antennas
- A number of people have mentioned that they can get the dealer to disconnect the telemetry as a precondition to buying. For instance, here.
- Jump the data communication module (DCM) cable with a ~$70 dongle to bypass just the telematics components
- Disconnect the DCM cable, which will likely gimp the infotainment if not other systems, or remove the entire DCM unit
You need a line break between your paragraph and your list.
Depending on the car you might be able to physically disable telemetry. Here are some thoughts/ideas I’ve been collecting:
- Hit “SOS” button and opt-out of all services through customer service. This of course requires trusting the company to actually do it.
- It’s possible that the info could be stored locally and then uploaded when it gets serviced though
- Remove the fuse to the modem/data communication module (DCM)
- Disconnect wiring to the LTE antennas
- A number of people have mentioned that they can get the dealer to disconnect the telemetry as a precondition to buying. For instance, here.
- Jump the data communication module (DCM) cable with a ~$70 dongle to bypass just the telematics components
- Disconnect the DCM cable, which will likely gimp the infotainment if not other systems, or remove the entire DCM unit
Oh, it looked Ok in my app (Voyager). But I added the line break.
- Hit “SOS” button and opt-out of all services through customer service. This of course requires trusting the company to actually do it.
Quite a few cars also still have a SIM card hidden somewhere, which can be removed. The location of it varies widely though and they’re usually pretty hard to find.
- Hit “SOS” button and opt-out of all services through customer service. This of course requires trusting the company to actually do it.
