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?
Remove the cellular modem.
What are the chances the software is designed to throw errors and “See a technician” messages if you dk?
I’ve heard it can cause problems in some models, so people need to do their research. With my truck it’s dead easy and are no drawbacks.
Depends on the car but I’d say the chance is above 50%
Not small, but I think you’ll have better chances with the mid level commuter cars. You’ll probably get some error messages on some of them, but if you can ignore them, they wouldn’t stop the car from running.It’s the high end ones and EVs that have a higher chance of bricking if you disable the antenna.
Most of the cars will still try to connect to open Wifi when available to upload data.
And add a Faraday’s cage. There are other things except for cellular connection used in cars such as WiFi and Bluetooth.
I’d want bluetooth for music from my phone though. And it’d be nice if my phone’s cellular and GPS didn’t get blocked.
But then the car can send the data via unprotected WiFi spots. I don’t think you can turn off autoconnect.
That’s impractical. Bluetooth and Wi-Fi also needs modems so just remove those too.
I mean sure if you can find and remove them. They’re very small.
They’re going to be in the same location for a given model year, which somebody will likely have documented online.
Get rid of the car
Perhaps disconnecting the RF antenna, and replacing it with an appropriate termination?
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.
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!!
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.
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.
I did not watch the mentioned video so I am not sure if what I am about to mention is discussed there or not. Also, sorry for the really long reply!
I am not aware of any available truly privacy respecting, modern cars. However, assuming theat you obtain one or you can do things like physically disconnect/remove all wireless connectivity from the car to make it as private/secure as possible, there still is little you can do to be truly anonymous.
Your car likely has a VIN and license plate as well as a vehicle registration. Assuming you legally obtained the vehicle and did not take any preventative measures prior to purchasing the car, those pieces of information will be tied back to you and your home address (or at least someone closely connected to you). You would need to initially obtain the vehicle via a compsy/LLC/partnership/etc. as the owner/renter/leasee of the vehicle and an address not associated to you. Additionally, you would need to find some means of avoiding or limiting the additional information connected to you that is likely required to obtain the vehicle like car insurance and your drivers license.
Additionally, any work that certain mechanics perform may be shared (either directly or indirectly) with data brokers - even just routine maintenance like an oil change or alignment. Hopefully you didn’t use your credit card, loyalty rewards program, etc. when you had any work done!
There is also CCTV, security cameras, and other video recorders that are nearly impossible to avoid. Given enough time/resources and maybe a little bit of information, your car could be tracked from its origin to destination locations. This location history can be used to identify you as the owner (or at least driver/passenger) of the car. Unless your car never leaves your garage, you can almost guarantee that your car is on some Ring camera, street camera, etc.
Furthermore, anything special or different about your car (custom decal, unusual window tinting, funny bumper sticker, uncommon color for the car, uncommon trim/package for the car, dented bumper, fancy rims, replaced tires, specific location of toll reader placement on the windshield, something hanging from your rear mirror, etc.) all help identify your car. The make/model and year of your car can also be used to identify your car if its not a common car in the area. These identifiers can be used to help track your car via the video feeds mentioned above.
Then there are license plate readers which are only slightly easier to avoid than the video recordings. Permanent, stationary license plate readers can be found on various public roads and parking lots. There are also people who drive around with license plate readers as part of their job for insurance/repossession purposes. You may be able to use some sort of cover over your license plate(s) to hinder the ability of license plate readers to capture your plate number, but that could be used to help identify your car in video feeds/recordings.
Also ford recently redesigned their app so the users have to use built in google maps in order to track their car.
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.
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.
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.
I don’t have any tips, but I wish I did. My car’s just over a year old and I don’t even like driving it since I found out it’s spying on me all the time. The ‘infotainment’ system is also integrated with everything in the vehicle so turning it off isn’t an option. I really like the car, but I feel like privacy is something that shouldn’t have to be a consideration when buying a vehicle. I’m just about positive there’s not a new vehicle available in the US market without one of these things in it unless you’re buying fleet vehicles.
Sell it and get a old pickup truck. Those things go forever
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
- Hit “SOS” button and opt-out of all services through customer service. This of course requires trusting the company to actually do it.
Take a look at motorcycles. They tend to be far behind the curve technology wise, and only Zerocycles have a telemetry system afaik.
they’re also dirty as fuck.
Old and serviceable. Don’t give me plastic
Also ford recently redesigned their app so the users have to use built in google maps in order to track their car.
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.
