So I have 2016 and 2017 Hondas that have relatively low tech for the infotainment garbage installed in cars. I’ve felt pretty safe just doing Bluetooth and disabling the GPS and stuff. There were no connected services possible on our cars other than location so hopefully disabling it works though I’m aware that can just be a mirage.
Our cars are starting to have more and more issues and also I really want to move to an EV to stop polluting the planet, but I fear the upgrade and lack of choice well have in guarding our privacy with all the new garbage that comes installed. Of course I can “opt out” but we all know means “we’ll try if the opportunity to make too much money doesn’t present itself sucker”. And the opportunities ring to an estimated $750B to be made on auto data alone by 2030. So options I’ve looked at is:
Pay the amount of money I would pay for a new car to convert my current vehicles into EVs and pay the same shop to replace worn parts etc… One less car in the landfill heaps
Buy old used cars that have already been fixed up with new parts and do the same. Also one less landfill car.
Build or mod my own car which I don’t have the fucking time and learning curve is way too high.
Find the least privacy invasive company and buy an EV from them and do whatever I can to minimize and opt out of any tracking but forfeit all service and convenience features. I don’t mind this but it will annoy the hell out of the family. Also, refer to my above statements on opting out.
Buy a recently new model that has a lot of options to mod (some I see are popular on some YouTube auto channels) and plan with a local person to remove all the data tracking stuff. The issue is this voids warranties and possibly makes my car unserviceable to any brand dealer.
We all know car markets suck for privacy, so what have you all done to mitigate? I started a new topic because other topics have mostly outlined the issues, but i want to pool up actually valuable advice, ideas, and strategies. What are you all doing to mitigate privacy loss in your cars? Or… what strategies have you been tumbling around in your brains?
I generally see a lot of movement towards open sourcing EV mods with old cars and I see this as becoming more feasible one day once there’s enough people doing it and there’s a market for fixing those cars. However, I need to consider future maintenance, we need cars for work and moving kids around to school (too far and no lanes for biking as I’m in the US), and avoiding now and future time sinks.
I am using my car with CarPlay connected to my phone and my phone has Control D / NextDNS profile in it, blocking most of the trackers. I am using it for navigation and music. My car’s dashboard has a useless navi and some remote control functions, which are also useless and requires yearly sub. I have Cupra Formentor e-Hybrid.
What is your expectation from car? What kind of data can it send to make you take such drastic measures?
honestly yeah if privacy is a bigger concern the best you can do is get an older ideally hybrid model, and replace the infontainment in it with one that you can use carplay
You really dont need to replace cars, in fact linus modified plouth’s honda civic and made it more modern by simply replacing the radio to infontainment with android auto/carplay and gave it a rear camera
that and this is after the important maintenance that you could do instead.
My primary concern is location data tied with PII, but also with more videos and sensors in cars, there is potential that this information too can be monitized. There’s already a lot of issues with this in Teslas and once one company normalizes it and gets away with it, others follow.
I was looking at the Mazda privacy policy which wasn’t one of the brands I’ve seen come up in the Mozilla and other recent security audits, but even they make a lot of broad statements that legally enable them to do whatever they want for “business purposes.”
There is an opt out, but I’ve seen too many examples of those not being honored by big tech and I don’t think it’s beyond car companies to just follow suit to whatever makes money and take on the potential civil class action as a monetary risk that will get settled for a fine that pales in comparison to the money they make on selling all their data with or without consent.
I use USB connection for music on graphene OS and put my phone as file device. It reads the songs fortunately. With tech getting more and more advanced in cars it’s going to be hard to find a car that can work wired any more without Bluetooth. I also unsibscribed from OnStar AKA SpyStar and don’t use any built in GPS services. Along with CoMaps downloaded maps local to my phone it is reall the best I can do. We can only do what we can!
This is why I keep talking about having a public internet persona and a private internet persona. Increasingly, it will be impossible to live without having certain things that are not conducive to privacy going on. Because of that, basically, I think we all should have a public persona where we follow the rules and do everything we are supposed to do, and our private persona, where we actually do anything we don’t want tracked. When it comes to a car, especially an electric vehicle, I think that’s going to fall under the public persona and just try to practice good hygiene and don’t “cross the streams.” That’s about it. You could do something crazy like figuring out how to disable GPS in the car, but I’m not sure if you want to ruin the value like that. I’m sure some other person on YouTube has done it, though. You might even be able to get software that you can plug into the COM port and mess with it yourself.
Or just do what I did and buy a nice big fat cruiser motorcycle LOL.
With more and more safety requirements for modern cars e.g. sensors, cameras, black boxes, software, it may already (or soon) be illegal to make deep modification of these components.
However some workarounds may still be possible but will require some research which car model is the most suitable for modification e.g.:
internal cameras and microphones can be removed, covered or unplugged without affecting driving security (but sometimes cameras check whether the driver falls asleep)
same with GPS module but it would have to be covered with something that doesn’t pass GPS signal
same could be done with GSM module but it may be illegal - and it gives away your location to law enforcement but also ambulance etc.
when unused, the car could be covered so the cameras can’t record anything
don’t connect your phone to car’s computer
So one would need to spend some time to find the right car.
Yeah, this is why I was looking at Mazda and others not on that list. I know not being on the list doesn’t imply they would have a good standing but since Mozilla’s takeaway from that report was “they are all bad but some are slightly less bad” I wanted to see if any other brands passed the test that I have considered purchasing, but they all are pretty much the same at this point.
There are a few discussions that started to progress with lawmakers asking the hard question and the Lina Kahn led FTC putting long awaited clarity on how these actions violate US law and showed real consequences with a recent 5-year ban of GM using Onstar. All of that energy has abated after Lina Kahn left, and so while nothing has reversed that I can tell with my new FTC administration, no further pressure is being added to care manufacturers for US consumers.
I doubt there could be a law put out around this without it having implications for older vehicles too. If we get to a point where we are requiring people to have sensors and making it illegal to remove them, or make older cars illegal to drive in public without this tech then we are in a really bad place.
My guess is that your care will be “unserviceable” or you’ll lose out on insurance credits for not having safety features installed on your car. There’s plenty of ways to make life rough before making a difficult to enforce law.
Buy the car that you want, and physically remove the cellular modem. The dealer will likely refuse to do this, but you can do it yourself or pay an independent shop to do it for you.
You can find guides on car forums and Youtube, e.g. here for a Tacoma (it’s very similar in other Toyotas). Plently of people take their cars to the track and refuse to let the manufacturer, dealer or insurance company know and make such mods.
With more and more safety requirements for modern cars e.g. sensors, cameras, black boxes, software, it may already (or soon) be illegal to make deep modification of these components.
I am not aware of any such law. Car inspections mandated by the DMV only cover essential safety-related aspects such as tire tread depth, and emission-related components like the exhaust. Nobody’s forcing you (yet) to be spied on by software for the benefit of the carmaker.
Let’s say I do this, would most car manufacturer’s dealers be instructed to fix it?
Also, wouldn’t there still be a way for the dealer to download data as part of the protocol to learn what needs to be fixed that I don’t send via radio when I get it serviced?
I could see a scenario where the service team is useless until they download the latest reports stored with the vehicle and this would all be pulled in a single chunk.
In this case I would need to use a third party mechanic and ensure I got a car that a mechanic could properly service my car, find the parts, etc…
This leads me back to an EV mod on a common old car or the ones I currently own with a good third party market of parts.
Its really easy to remove tracking from vehicles. You can disconnect the sim card, and any antennas, disable onstar or any tracking services, maybe remove the fuse for it.
It shouldn’t affect the warranty at all. If you are still worried about the warranty, buy a used car, and take it to a private independent mechanic.
You’re over thinking this. There are still many areas where there is no cell phone reception. Parking garages, mountainous areas, etc. If your car needed a cell phone signal to drive, then it wouldn’t work in these areas.
While not a complete source, here is a video where a professional car thief mentions removing 2 trackers, disabling onstar, and removing the fuse for onstar - preventing any tracking of the vehicle. Play from 14 minutes onward. The knowledge on how vehicle tracking can be stopped is out there if you know where to look.
No. Dealerships care about making money. They are independent franchises. If one dealership gives you a hard time, just let them know you’ll take your vehicle to a different dealership, and purchase cars from there in the future.
Well, um… We can’t be sure that the so-called IOT trash and other smart useless gizmos don’t uses their own hardcoded encrypted DNS addresses. In fact, I think they might not work properly if they are prevented from connecting to these servers. Even if we pay for something, we’re still essentially the product anyway. I’d only get into a car with cameras and microphones inside and out, connected to the internet 24/7 via LTE (telematic control unit), if I were on my deathbed going to the hospital.
Good point. If you’re concerned that the car may store information locally, get it serviced by an independent shop or DIY. I don’t think that resorting to extreme measures like modernizing an old car is necessary to achieve reasonable privacy.
So, the consensus I will aim to go with would be to buy a recently used car to avoid paying for the warranty and also removes the concern of honoring that warranty by getting serviced by a dealership. Rather I can shop for a local third party mechanic instead.
This gets me all the new stuff (EV and fresh vehicle) without a terrible amount of DIY, and not having to be concerned about local data extraction.
One more thing I will do is call around to the local mechanics to see what brands they are most comfortable serving and finding access to parts. This can help narrow down the ideal brands for working outside of a dealership I’m my area.
I’ll see about getting the family on board with this approach and report back how things go. Hopefully this can be a start to tackling these issues in an approachable way for most here in the community.