I posted a flavor of this comment on an article a few months ago, but it's relevant here:
I have a seven year old Volkswagen, not financed. I'm security conscious and made sure to disable all the data collection I could find in the companion app before removing my account, turn off remote access services, dig through the infotainment to turn off what I could, etc.
Last year I requested a Carfax on it, and one of the fields in the request was current mileage. I entered an estimate like 75000 miles. On form submission, that field failed validation with red subtext along the lines of 'this is less than the last reported mileage of 75345, reported <5 or so days prior>'. Checking my odometer and looking at my past few days' trips, that was indeed accurate.
The car hadn't been to a shop or out of my possession in weeks, so I can only assume the telemetry was still dialing home and selling to third parties despite my best efforts to disable it.
Tangential, but one of the concerns I have about these 'smart' cars is they have an expiration deadline.
There's an exceedingly common type of failure I have seen myself in industrial electronics and (has happened with Tesla at least once), that some module keeps a log of some kind in a nonvolatile flash, and this flash has a limited lifecycle, which the equipment reaches at some years into its life (or earlier, if the flash came from a bad batch, or more logging happens than planned).
At this point the board usually gets bricked and replacement is very hard due to cryptographic handshakes between components.
I share the sentiment. I want a new car, but only if I can guarantee all telemetry is hard disabled. But I don’t have the kind of money to buy a new car and risk bricking it. Luckily I’m pretty handy, so I’ll have to keep my 2014< cars forcefully running as long as I can.
I have non concerns about having a built in button to phone emergency services. I don’t even mind if it auto rings in a crash. I’m even happy to provide position to the emergency service in the event of dialing them.
Manufacturers use this capacity as an excuse to push more adtech penny and dime data abuse, knowing half the world will blame the government.
From a cellphone’s perspective a crash = extreme acceleration with different vectors vs a dropped phone, they can also listen for broken glass etc. So even with GPS off that’s detectable.
Generally I read your comment that a dropped phone only hits the floor once, therefore there is only one vector and the car always overturns/flips/turns and therefore there are multiple vectors measurable in the car?
I am not convinced yet, it might be possible without GPS, at least to some degree of error (false positives and false negatives).
The info in the link requires GPS to be switched on.
hmm
Disabling the antennas is the only way to be sure. There will typically be a coax connection that you can cap with a terminator. GPS can be merged with other radios you might not want to lose but suitable splitters are available.
GPS uses a different frequency and a very weak signal. The antenna is typically separate from the others but it's very small <5 mm¹. It can be on the same board with other antennas with 3…4 cm separation between them. Also, we tested a GSM tracker and it still worked with a mismatched antenna. This was in Eastern Europe where cell tower power is quite strong. You have to completely remove the antenna and terminate its connection to be 100% sure. If you have coax cables with external antennas, you're lucky. The worst case scenario is when they're embedded in the infotainment system with amtennas and everything. This is also a cost cutting measure, so it's very likely to be used. The infotainment system is usually ideally placed under the windshield for undisturbed signal reception. But there is still hope to completely cover its back side and edges with aluminium foil tape.
Ford has GPS with FM on the same cable. They have splitters for this arrangement. This is why they transitioned to stubby antennas for better GPS and good enough FM.
I thought most would use their “shark fin” on the roof for everything (if there is one but there usually is). Terminating on the other end somewhere with a color coded FAKRA connector.
That's quite far away for the weak GPS signal over RF cable, but they still do it. Or maybe the GPS unit and LTE modem are also in the shark fin or nearby and they use a serial, CAN FD/XL or single pair ethernet connection to it? Another choice is in the center of the dashboard under the winshield or under the mirror.
> turn off remote access services, dig through the infotainment to turn off what I could
This is never enough. You can't trust a software switch. You need to remove the hardware capability if you want to make sure the car isn't spying on you. In the best case, the telematics box has it's own fuse, and that may be enough. In other cases, you need to find the box and unplug it. The service manual will have it's location. In some cars it's easily accessible, in others less so and you need to remove the glove box or part of the dash. Dealers will probably refuse to do it, my advice would be to DIY or find an independent mechanic who will do it.
The most reliable way to permanently silence the cellular modem is to pull the relevant fuse. In the above case, this also disables the microphone, which I think is a positive. Unplugging the DCM entirely, however, seems to disable to right speaker, which is wired through the DCM for some reason.
>Unplugging the DCM entirely, however, seems to disable to right speaker, which is wired through the DCM for some reason.
I'm cynical, but unnecessarily coupling the ability to send telemetry with some feature people definitely want seems like exactly the sort of thing that would be done intentionally.
>right speaker, which is wired through the DCM for some reason
This is to provide cell phone audio during calls – if you're already inside your dashboard to remove the DCM (modem), there is an easy pin-out to restore the right speaker's music audio (which varies across Toyota models, but usually is as simple as placing a jumper across two pins of the unplugged wiring harness.
It varies by car. For my Honda, I believe disconnecting the antenna is enough. I looked at a Toyota and the antenna is shared. To disable the phone-home you had to disconnect a box … but that’s difficult. The box is also designed to call 911 or 999 emergency services and is connected to the microphone and one of the speakers. You have to rewire those if you want to use the microphone with your cellphone or play any stereo sound. Do your research before buying or disconnecting things.
Your mileage went from VW->telematics vendor->broker->carfax, thats the chain it usually follows. The fuse stops it but the real issue is the owner is the only one without the record.
You could probably find some interesting info if you send out some privacy requests through the chain. LexisNexis and Verisk are consumer reporting agencies, so they have to provide you a disclosure on request. Start there.
Is there usually a fuse that just turns off the telemetry? I would be surprised if that is the case. I could see the design being "if you turn this fuse off to turn off telemetry, you'll also lose these functions: ..." and if they did it "right" they'd make the car non-functional.
My car is from 2011 and I do wonder if there is any telemetry in it.
Just looked up my 2016 Toyota. My car has no telemetry module, and for cars that do there are companies that sell harnesses that plug into the module, terminating the antennas and/or cutting power without affecting anything else
There’s probably a fuse to turn off the cellular radio that transmits the data. Whether that’s all it covers may vary from car to car. Or in some models it’s probably possible to just disconnect the radio entirely.
Yeah an electrical fuse for telemetry seems really odd. Even without malice it would be strange if disconnecting power to some part of the computer only affected telemetry.
I could see a fuse for cellular comms, be presumably that would also disable maps, contacting emergency services in an accident, etc. which might be an acceptable tradeoff.
My Ford has a dedicated fuse for accessory packages that include the modem. Mine doesn't have any other options that share that fuse so it is functionally the telemetry fuse.
Telemetry is usually a standalone module. Heres one off a 26 Hyundai Palisade --
Telematics (DCU)
Part num: 96510P9100 firmware (OTA updatable) 01F.7.CAN.3.000.18.714.9
Its only job is to detect harsh acceleration and brake events. Probably being sold to your insurer.
So I first read this comment and thought is looked like AI and thought I’d give the benefit of the doubt. Then I saw this where there is no doubt: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49687774
I thought, I wonder if it’s the same guy? Sure enough.
If I take your two sentence comment and remove one sentence it also is non-sensical. Stop removing context.
>Your mileage went from VW->telematics vendor->broker->carfax, thats the chain it usually follows. The fuse stops it but the real...
Prior commentary advised removing the fuse to stop the telemetry. This comment points out that the chain of information flow precludes the owner of the car.
>the real issue is the owner is the only one without the record
I don't understand what "the record" is referring to here. The mileage is presumably still on the odometer of the car. So what is "the record" that the owner does not have and how is that causing the owner an issue?
You have to read it in context with what it is referring to, and perhaps to know a little bit about the issue. In that respect, it's like a lot of conversations around here.
I read this as:
"Removing the fuse that provides power to the telematics module can stop data collection from a vehicle, but the real issue is that the putative owner is the only one who isn't instantly privy to all of the collected data."
In any case, the complaint above was obviously about AI usage, and there are a lot of good reasons to use AI for editing your words, starting with (for example) if you're not a native speaker.
Right?! There is so much of this! In my country, for financial products, there needs to be a very clear label with some obligatory fields (we don't allow pharma commercials, but I think Americans know this as the details rattled off after a pharma commercial). It's time we get this for any tech. Companies just let you opt-out, but some weasel words in the terms and conditions let them still do 90% what they did before you hit the switch.
I have been thinking of upgrading from my 2003 Corolla to an electric (not Tesla). The Corolla hasn't had a single repair problem in 23 years!
My main motivation to get a better car was, DD goes to a super prestigious college and it seems degrading to put their bumper sticker on a 23 year old car! But I guess I won't get another car. Serves you right mfr mfrs!
See my other comment, but the fuse pulling stuff still works on GM EVs and disables connectivity, but the telematics unit may still be collecting offline to batch upload.
Carfax also can report estimated mileage, but it might have a different flag in the system that allows override.
I've been handed a Carfax on my own car that has a reported mileage much greater than the actual mileage on the car, and the car has not been out of my possession.
The most horrible part this crime is I read somewhere That the amount the car companies get for spying on your locations is some pathetic paltry amount like $1-$5 one time. These car companies sell you out to insurance companies and such so they can collect data and use it AGAINST you. Ghouls everywhere now.
Random Public data:
Honda sold data on roughly 97,000 cars to Verisk for $25,920—amounting to about 26 cents per car.
Hyundai sold data on about 1.7 million vehicles for roughly $1 million—about 61 cents per car
That doesn’t smell right. Why develop the telemetry and go to all of the trouble for such a paltry return? That probably wouldn’t even cover the legal consulation to cover their ass, much less go through the trouble of implementing and selling the telemetry.
It would be cheaper to do nothing if that were true.
There are less questionable things they can do with all that data: I'm sure it's really useful to figure out how electrical and mechanical faults correlate with driving conditions / weather / region etc. The result from this is just a better car in the next iteration.
Then someone offers them $1 each for a fleet of 1M cars, who is going to turn down $1M for a few TB of data?
To your second point, surely they’ve considered the hit to their relationship with their customers before selling for $1/car. Surely the trust between them and their buyers is worth far, far more than that.
Even assuming maximum greed, is every car manufacturer really so short-sighted as to break that trust for so small of a return?
We need to start thinking more like the average evil C-suite. We live in the golden age of fraud. Not my words. There's probably some sort of circular deal where the people that enacted this data sharing personally benefit in some massive financial way. The low financial benefit from the parent company side is probably to avoid regulatory eyeballs.
something around 50% of Uber's profits now come from their "private" owned insurance Company. That, of course, does not have to disclose how they are making money. Even though Uber is their only customer.
There is probably some sort of similar deal happening here.
I oversimplified this, and actually it's a lot closer to what happens with any digital service.
Rather than saying "give us 1$ and we'll sell you a customer's data" it was more like "provide the navigation software and we'll let you keep the data". It probably seems like an elegant solution: as long as the driver needs navigation they "pay" for it with their data. It's really no different from how gmail or facebook works.
Telemetry is used to push service, which is the big money maker for dealerships. Roadside assistance, maps subscriptions, driving data for market research.
All it would need is a wi-fi antenna internally, and then it could connect to an open wi-fi network anywhere. And it's going to be pretty much impossible to avoid ever driving your car within range of some open network.
It would have to find an open Wi-Fi network that isn't gated behind a captive portal, which is very rare. Rare enough that most telemetry would be too stale to be useful.
Xfinity (Comcast) does the same, and the LG TV data leak demonstrated it joining these open “xfinitywifi” SSIDs to transmit telemetry home (edit: retracted, see below subthread).
While LG TVs send a lot of private data when connected to the internet, I'm not aware of any credible reports that they automatically connect to open or partner-provided wifi networks without a user choosing to do so.
It's certainly a threat to keep an eye open for, but it seems manufacturers haven't quite stooped to that low yet.
It has not been demonstrated actively in use, only that it is possible and trivial to implement. Statement with regards to it being demonstrated retracted.
I stand by the concept that any consumer IoT device could join these networks, and the end user would never know. The only legal solution to this problem statement is to physically disable the radio on the device if assurance is desired.
> I'm security conscious and made sure to disable all the data collection I could find in the companion app before removing my account, turn off remote access services, dig through the infotainment to turn off what I could, etc.
Android Auto, Apple CarPlay, OEM mobile app...Bluetooth??
Consider the business case of leased Comcast (as the largest ISP in the US) modems broadcasting open side-channel xfinitywifi SSIDs...essentially everywhere.
I would be very surprised if it was that simple - systems in modern cars are so interlinked that I would expect that pulling a fuse would cause something else to break, resulting in dash lights or broken functionality.
> Antennas or not, the dealer might just plug in and upload everything during service.
You should have an empty glovebox as well when you take it in for service if you don't trust the shop.
If you have registration / insurance paperwork, you're now on that shop's mailing list and can expect to get "$15 off your next oil change ..." flyers in the mail.
Lots of automotive OEMs want that specific kind of information for generic reasons (how many of what model made it to what mileage under what circumstances) that are entirely reasonable. Lots of them also want that info for warranty related reasons (you've hit the mileage limit and we won't do anything for you anymore). But, my state of Michigan is starting a program to evaluate replacing registration fees with mileage charges to account for the additional wear and tear on the roads from EVs that don't pay gas taxes to fund road repairs. This would require some kind of verification of mileage, which we can't currently do during emissions testing, since it doesn't exist here. Legally required data retention is becoming a bigger and bigger issue, particularly in light of the driver monitoring requirement starting in MY27 vehicles by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act terms. That will presumably be integrated into any black box recording in a crash and probably subpoenaed in any dispute going forward.
In other news, I think I'll be taking a trip to somewhere down south to find a nice, used 1999 F350 dually with a manual transmission, since they're going to cease to exist shortly...
I know you're not the culprit, but it's annoying to see crap like this (highly invasive tracking, ostensibly for slightly more efficient tax collection), when far cheaper, better efforts (like Rhode Island's attempt to add tolls for just semis -- 98-99% of their freeway maintenance costs) are killed before they have a chance to prove themselves.
It’s not futile. Write your congressperson and state representatives. If enough people do this around the country, laws will eventually be passed to prevent it.
This is why there are
moral panics about things people feel in their guts: most people are reasonably easily unsettled and distracted by queer people, people who look different, people their people don’t trust being in charge.
It works. Most people are happier focusing and holding forth on that and repeating familiar statements than they are talking to congressional staff about policy.
Your car that you paid a lot for and you like and have positive useful experiences with every day? That’s going to be way farther down the list of things to worry about.
I'd like to point out that the CA assembly has passed AB-1542 and it is likely going to be signed by the governor this week. This would make the sale and sharing of "sensitive" personal information illegal, and one of the sensitive personal categories is geolocation data that can map an individual to within a 1850-ft radius.
In my understanding, this pretty much makes this type of driver data illegal to sell or share. CalPrivacy's enforcement division has their eye on connected car manufacturers already, so we'll see what they do with that.
Not true. If they do that they are violating the law and that will show up in the audits. They have to delete the data, all records associated with that identifier, now including any 3rd party data that they bought from other brokers and did not collect or buy originally. There have been many loopholes for years but they are all being closed.
It's a complete shadow economy, users don't want it and mostly don't know it. But sometimes it surfaces, ie we had a public gathering in my village about the plans to restructure one of our main streets, since people don't feel safe walking an biking there naturally we want it 1 way or 30 km/u. In response rhe person from the municipality whipped up some graphs with speed profiles along the street as it is now. Naturally I ask how they get that data and he says "you can just order it online, I think from Google and Apple originally? Oh, yeah sometimes you can identify things, like a cop once speeded along this road and he could see his datapoint (a far outlier)!" Nobody saw any problem with this. And it's such a small step away from direct actions based on this data (although people would probably take action themselves the moment they understand there are direct downsides for them.)
I did a GDPR request to KIA and I was amazed what they collected.
Here's some examples: How long I let the car warm up before driving, G force around every GPS corner, acceleration rates, max speeds, every GPS datapoint etc.
How can this be stopped, from a technical perspective? Can I wrap the comms in a Faraday cage?
Obviously it would be better to have this action be illegal. But with legal privacy protections eroding in the US and other countries, it seems prudent to have a better understanding of the systems involved in the immoral surveillance.
I've had good luck with pulling service manuals, finding the telematics antenna connectors, and unplugging them. It's popular to pull the telematics module fuse, but that typically disables internal microphones and GPS that are used by android auto and carplay. This severely degrades features spouses expect to just work. The antenna pulling is a much lighter touch.
Okay it's a red herring here. I also like to use carplay and the phone's GPS is truly awful to use. I also like to dictate texts and take calls in my car. These are things that don't need to be sacrificed if a scalpel is used in place of a butcher's knife.
Sometimes it helps to have someone with their priorities in order keeping a reality check on people who don't always stay grounded.
The convenience here for you is CarPlay though. You could instead use a different more accurate gps device you plugin that doesnt have the data leak issues concerned in articles like this one. Then if you really needed you could pull out a sort of external monitor stick it over the other display when carplaying and when needing car-vital features you need the car display for, pull over and temporarily do that thing then pull your extra monitor out again and keep going.
I think maybe being grounded has changed - I would be comfortable doing what I described but I imagine your comfort with your preexisting solution means your ground has shifted and a reality check means you woudl rather give away your data than take the higher friction option?
I think most people would not be on board with your solution, but in general to your point I would say everyone draws the line somewhere different.
Yes there are many (maybe most) who will not give up their comforts or risk modifying their vehicle in order to make it more private... but trying to play the judge in a made-up internet game of altruism olympics is not going to convert many people either.
You're implying the stub of an exposed coax inside a faraday cage is capable of establishing a link with cell towers. This doesn't really pass fermi tests and I've never observed it myself, just read the paranoid concerns of people online.
Regardless, taping some foil around the connectors with the foil making okay contact with the metal chassis is more than enough attenuation at sub GHz microwave to remove this concern without having to source specialty terminations and crimpers (or worse, non-reversible damage to the OEM cable assemblies by repurposing their terminations). I've done the foil+tape on some of my vehicles, but it hasn't made a difference in binary "does it connect or not?" testing.
Best to use a termination, to avoid the power that would have gone into the antenna from reflecting back into the transmitter output and damaging the output driver transistors. Damage is no bad thing if you do want to permanently disable the transmitter, but not so good if you want it to be reversible. Chances of damage due to reflections is probably low given the relatively low power being transmitted, but best not to take the risk if it can easily be avoided with a termination.
I agree it's a good practice. However in this case I consider the possibility of frying the amplifier a knock-on benefit. The fucking thing should have never been made.
If a hypothetical future owner feels strongly about it then replacing a telematics module in the dash is much easier than replacing harness runs. I somehow doubt I would sell one of my vehicles to someone who would do that though.
A good question. I'm not really concerned with the answer since I don't plan on selling my cars. I'm sure a good population would pay to not have their car spy on them and I can think of very few that would pay to have it turned on.
Easily reversible mods only affect price for suckers anyway.
> How can this be stopped, from a technical perspective?
It can't. Not realistically.
It can be stopped by legislation. But that would require politicians who have our interests as a priority rather than the various industries. So not going to happen anytime soon.
When I was a lad we walked out to the car and did that with the key. In the snow. It wasn't that bad and, despite what you may have heard, was not in fact uphill both ways.
It’s practical to see battery level so I can optimise the electricity price at which I charge it.
Although it wasn’t worth the cost of the 3 year subscription so I now just estimate the charge status based on the charge’s power consumption.
If the car is at 10% battery, it may be worth charging at .15 or .3€/kWh. If it’s at 70% charge, I’ll wait until the price drops to .005€/kWh. The whole thing is automated in HA.
These cars are more software than hardware now. And like everything else in the software industry, every product gets released incomplete and patched later.
Although the correct solution would be a USB port somewhere to insert a patch file rather that over-the-air updates that might happen while driving.
You can do stuff like like turn it on to heat or cool the cabin, live track it's location, lock/unlock doors, open/close trunk, and updates are mostly for the infotainment systemn and driving assists.
Their is a cell modem in the car, so all these features are available anywhere the car has cell service.
> You can do stuff like like turn it on to heat or cool the cabin, live track it's location, lock/unlock doors, open/close trunk, and updates are mostly for the infotainment systemn and driving assists.
Are any of those things more important than your security (e.g., against hackers) and privacy?
It definitely can be stopped. For example, China sells cars internally at cheaper prices, but they are locked to prevent using them outside the country. However, there are people who can hack and unlock them allowing operating in any country. But maybe it would be illegal in the West, I don't know. Removing the modem is an easier task.
>Much like owning a home without an HOA attached, it is becoming harder and harder to meet this requirement.
The near universal proliferation of owner's associations and management groups and whatnot for developments larger than ~1ac (the EPA threshold, some states/towns have lower) is something you can lay at the feet of the Clean Water Act and it's implementation and precedents over the following decades.
The exact area of the buildings, the driveways, the community park and gazebo, etc, etc, are necessary features of the site plan that makes the math that is required to meet stormwater/environmental requirements. And and some legal entity has to be responsible for that in perpetuity. Enter the HOA. This is also why HOAs often won't allow you to expand your driveway or add a non-permeable patio, it could (prob not, but still) ruin the environmental calculations they're responsible for enforcing as a condition.
I'm not nearly as familiar with car regulatory stuff but I would bet a lot of money that they're using OTA telematics to check some sort of compliance box...
I believe it was Strongtowns reporting a few months back that HOAs are generally being driven by developers, the only folks with (a) land to build in bulk; (b) capital, relationships, and experience to get fully through permitting in bulk; (c) building a substantial fraction of SFH.
Strongtowns is happy to follow the money and incentives on all sorts of other issues. Why do they just throw up their hands and say "it's the developers" on this issue?
Developers don't do anything that costs money, like set up an HOA, without a reason. The developers create the HOA because you need your >1ac residential development to pass stormwater permitting. While you theoretically could make each individual .25ac parcel you're putting a house on compliant it's infinitely cheaper to just ignore all that, grade everything toward the road, dig a ditch, send the contents of the ditch through your stormwater treatment features, build in a little margin to those items, show the permitting authority the numbers that prove it passes with flying colors and when some jerk says "but what if X Y Z changes" you point to the excess you built in and tell them to GFY.
Now, where it really gets evil is when you start really pinching pennies or where the rules change over the course of the process making your numbers not work. Say you've got a lot of grade, a lot of rainfall, a lot of stormwater you gotta "treat". Well, you start adding rules to the HOA. Require certain parts of the lots remains grass or planter or whatever. Disallow patios, but do allow wood decks because the municipality considers those pervious, etc, etc. Or maybe the results you've got are marginal but you throw the bureaucrats a bone by saying you'll disallow car-ports and sheds in the HOA rules to prevent people from adding impervious surface. Or maybe you're uphill of some wetlands but not close enough to be regulated by default you promise to disallow working on cars and require people pick up their pet waste and not use lawn fertilizer or some other laundry list of certain things in order to make the local town's wetlands people comfortable not raising objection and claiming jurisdiction.
And of course, however these rules and plans shake out, the HOA is responsible for implementation in perpetuity.
Not just storm water, but also things like maintenance of 'common areas', roads, and snow removal. Many small municipalities are budget strapped and don't want to be responsible for plowing/surfacing the new little 1/8 of a mile culdesac the developer created to build their 'neighborhood'.
In carving up the 5 acres the developer purchased, the 30 houses they squeezed in left some remainder that wasn't buildable or odd shaped, so this now becomes a lame 'park' or some other space that requires maintenance.
I read all my local municipal meeting minutes, and at least around here, permitting and ordinances control all the environmental/nuisance stuff, so I can't really explain why HOAs go beyond the collective expenses into the draconian rules.
>so I can't really explain why HOAs go beyond the collective expenses into the draconian rules.
Grass is really good at filtering/absorbing/treating stormwater so you might have to force everyone to keep their lawns lawn because the way you've got the lots graded you need that little bit of extra because it lets you make your "shit parcel" where the basin will go a little smaller and squeeze one extra house into the development.
Beyond that I think what a lot of it comes down to is that local governments are invariably run by a lot of the same kinds of busybodies that HOAs attract and the way rules are written these days the "normal permitting process" exists only to let the useful idiots think that just about everything isn't discretionary. There's always some gotcha or twistable phrase so everything goes through a special permit or variance of some sort. That opens up all sorts of off the record dealing wherein the developer agrees to throw everything and the kitchen sink into the initial HOA rules and the Karens in government make sure those things are in there before deciding how to exercise their discretionary approval.
There’s no reason that sort of compliance needs an HOA. Most places already have building codes enforced by mandatory government inspections for major renovations.
It really isn't. FB Marketplace is literally awash in perfectly serviceable vehicles that don't and can't phone home. For the budget conscious among us it's also significantly cheaper to buy a "clapped out" used older car and refresh the drive train than buying new or late model.
Besides the irony of a privacy-conscious user using facebook to buy a car... those "perfectly-serviceable vehicles" are 1. no longer manufactured, and 2. will not last forever.
Unless a new age of unconnected cars becomes a reality in the near future, I don't see this being a long-term solution.
"will not last forever" doesn't comport with observed reality to date. There are literally model A's still on the road. Barring true oddities there doesn't appear to be a model of production vehicle that has gone extinct at any point in automotive history. Anyway, three of my cars are older than I am, and I am not a young man. Buying into their shit is optional.
How do you think right-to-repair intersects with cars?
An obvious thing may be to say the software must be published or the spec released, but we've had computers in cars since the 80s. It seems like a tall task but people can and do reverse engineer entire ECU systems (See Trionic Tuning)
Another seemingly very obvious one - requiring manufacturers to publish specifications regarding ALL OBD interface options. Of course this immediately runs into trouble. Saab for example gated features of the security system to prevent key reprogramming, swapping of certain components without a dial out to the internet using specific saab software that runs on a laptop and interfaces.
> How do you think right-to-repair intersects with cars?
Strongly. You don't own the thing you purchased if you can't legally repair it or legally obtain the knowledge to repair it. At beat you're paying an overpriced lease and granting a liability waiver.
I tend to agree. In my mind, it would be pretty cost efficient to put a builtin- system diagnostic utility in all new vehicles that provide at least moderately good tooling for the ODB. T
When given the choice between privacy and convenience, the great majority of consumers choose convenience over and over again.
I'm not sure what the solution is, but it's not going to be market based if you look at any recent trends. Interest in privacy is unfortunately a niche concern outside of places like HN.
Anyone who has tried to market a privacy oriented product knows what I am talking about.
Congrats you free speech absolutist! You got my comment flagged, but the good thing is everybody with above room temperature IQ can infer what a [flagged] comment probably said based on context :)
Found the Musk Stan. It’s perfectly fine to be angry with a political trillionaire who did all of the aforementioned things. Keep being disappointed, that’s going to be your natural state when this dust settles.
Are you being sarcastic? Hard to tell online. I don’t know the exact numbers, like I said. I know it’s non-zero because of simple logic. That’s all I need to know to form an opinion on the guy.
The "genie out of the bottle" argument has been used in the ongoing AI-or-no-AI, we're-so-cooked/we're-so-back debate among software engineers, something like: you can't undo technological advances nor would you want to, so best cope with this new reality.
And there are technological "advances" I would very much like to undo. One of them being social media, another being modern cars. Automobiles peaked when they were purely mechanical. An average American high schooler could understand all its systems, and many did. When they started becoming LANs on wheels beginning in the 90s, they became necessary millstones around their owners' necks, and these days they're as inscrutable as a smartphone, just as user-hostile, and just as tethered to vendor services. I think my father was speaking from a place of wisdom when he groused about computers in automobiles.
And no, EVs are actually simpler than ICE engines, their drivetrain being basically a battery, a set of electric motors, and maybe some variable resistors to control speed. An EV that is purely electromechanical and operable via analog controls would be a godsend, but it's not going to happen under current regulatory environments.
Two different things are getting called "car data" here.
Facts about the car: VIN, spec, recall status, odometer. Attested by someone other than the owner. Outlives every owner and the owner is the last to have it, if at all.
Facts about the driver: speed, location, timestamp. Thats what GM sold, the fix is to not collect it but OEMs seem to take 'anonymization' approach.
The DRIVER act treats both as the same which is why it fails to fix anything. The second needs a ban. The first needs the opposite - especially as we take the driver out of the vehicle - an authoritative record of the vehicle. How do we expect AVs to have adoption when the only safety certification is the company's press release?
Do they do the same spying on the models/units produced for sale in EU? It’s not actually a necessary part of the operation of the device, so it makes sense they’d be able to sell them without it.
HN on average is a little behind on the general EU "privacy" stance (though I saw some recent topic about that here). EU was about privacy, a few decades ago. Nowadays it did a complete U-turn and legislates mandatory anti-privacy union-wide laws every year.
- Chat Control law, now all messaging must be intercepted and monitored.
- eIDAS law, mandating that web-browser vendors must now accept state issued root certificates, so that states can selectively and without any legal procedure deploy MITM attacks at will.
- ADDW law, mandating that all new cars must a permanent mandatory camera and microphone surveillance module inside a car, which can't be disabled by law (bye-bye insurance if you will). There also other fun things in it like mandatory autobraking, mandatory auto lane-assist etc.
- ProtectEU laws, demanding backdoors to emails and such (maybe it's the same as Chat Control, not sure).
- AI Act legalizes AI surveillance over CCTV recordings without any judicial approval.
- European Media Freedom (duh) Act legalizes deployment of shit like Pegasus against journalists.
I'm pretty sure I'm missing a lot here too. You get the picture. EU is getting fast track into Stazi 2.0, everyone is fine with it, "because children" /s
There is no EU law that mandates "all messaging must be intercepted and monitored."
There is no EU law mandating permanent, non-disableable cameras and microphones in cars.
ProtectEU is not a law, not related to email and does not demand any "backdoors."
The AI Act bans real-time facial/biometric recognition in public places... which is a good thing. It does not "legalize AI surveillance"... quite the opposite.
EMFA does not authorize the deployment of spyware and they have publicly condemned the use of Pegasus specifically.
There is always a citizen who honestly thinks that emperor is good and loves the citizens. The reality is that emperor loves the citizens that love the emperor and will do everything to find and destroy the citizens that don’t love the emperor. History books are full of such examples.
Right now I am repairing old car that does not track me, does not film me and doesn’t try to drive me. It’s a such a great joy to drive it without stupid beeping and automatic wheel movements. Especially without suicidal steering in construction sites when the modern system fails.
Chat Control - a) it is a law, mandatory in whole EU (because it is a "EU Regulation", and that is a law); b) I was indeed to broad and made a mistake, for now only not E2EE messages must be intercepted and monitored. E2EE is on a the chopping block in Chat Control 2.0 which is being drafted, in progress.
Advanced Driver Distraction Warning (ADDW) - a) it is EU Regulation and so it is a law; b) ADDW mandates a non-disableable surveillance camera (not sure about microphone) inside a car.
ProtectEU is indeed Chat Control plus extra, so here I was incorrect. Encrypted emails are temporarily safe, until Chat Control 2.0 is passed. And given how they bruteforced CC 1.0 in multiple blatant retries, it will eventually pass.
Regarding EU AI Act you are replying to something I didn't write. Sure it doesn't allow real-time surveillance. I wrote that it does allow surveillance over the recorded materials. This technicality allows passing all video through storage, then monitor suspects via AI programs all without judicial approvals.
And finally EMFA does authorize deployment of the spyware against journalists in cases of investigating a crime carrying 3= years penalty. Do I need to spell out how laughable that is? Practically any national security crime carry similar or heavier penalties and govt. can start a very broad and arbitrary investigation for any reason. This means that the matter of starting surveillance is a small technicality really with zero oversight.
ChatControl 2.0 is exactly "all messaging must be intercepted and monitored" ...
Some of it probably is a slippery slope argument however that slippery slope has materialized already in other areas ... And security plays a role here as well. Maybe the camera/software/system is mandated not to identify driver (as is written in ADDS "spec") but atrocious security the modern car has would probably allow for that somehow...
You can invoke CCPA (if applicable) and directly ask a covered business or registered data broker for an exact output of your existing information on their systems. This is honestly rare and most companies will find ways to deny you - asking for various documents to prove your identity and hoping you quit responding.
If you are a CA resident you can also get on the state's DROP platform to request that all registered data brokers delete your data, but it's only for deletion and not the other 4 types of data requests allowed under the CCPA (right to know, right to collect, right to opt out, and right to limit use).
Several years ago, a German company whose name rhymes with "rowdy" sought permission from a Middle Eastern government to collect location and other information (e.g., speed) from its sold automobiles. The government asked them what they wanted to do with the information. They dithered and dawdled and failed to come up with an answer beyond "improved consumer experience." They failed to mention thay planned to sell the collected information to third-parties.
> third-party partners process information about you and how you use our services, including clicks and screen recordings, using first and third-party cookies, pixels, and similar technologies
Any type of data gathering should be forbidden. The "with consent" is bullshit, as the only way to not give consent is to leave society and live in a cave. (No driving a car, no taking a flight, no reading a website, no subscribing to any service, not playing games, etc.) When there is no real choice there is no consent either.
Corporations have profiles on citizens that makes the Gestapo or the KGB seem uninformed in comparison. There is no freedom when the people in power know everything about you.
In my GM car I have the wonderful opportunity to pull the OnStar fuse and disable all cellular connectivity. However, I am concerned the telematics information are stored in long term storage and if I have to reconnect the fuse, all my driving will be batch uploaded. I hope not!! And the GPS still works. Maybe I can find some dummy loads as well or the antennae.
It's still better than other modern cars though? I think.
If you are willing to lose GPS, maybe you could set the car's internal clock to the year 2000. This might fool a cursory data dump that is looking for "last three months of driving habits". Would obviously not stand up to any real scrutiny, but mostly painless.
GPS provides the time, so this probably won't work. If it ever reconnects it will just reset its clock. That's often one of the first things that any computer does after a long period of no power/connection.
The systems must be separate if they were able to disable some of the network connectivity but maintain GPS.
I thought GP was talking about if they had to reconnect the systems for some reason, would archived telemetry suddenly be uploaded. Which is a real possibility, so I was suggesting poisoning the data. Even if you correct the clock today, the previously recorded timestamps cannot be automatically fixed. Even better would be to reset the clock on every startup event.
Which is all still a band-aid solution - a targeted analysis could mostly correct the time-keeping. This just prevents getting scooped up in a simple drag net kind of search.
Because HN/nerds like to think of ourselves as objective, open to the truth and data driven results. Then we find out, we're no better than the average, just different topics.
Tesla charges a $10/month subscription for its connected features, with relatively high uptake because its software is actually great (unlike the dogshit UX of most cars), so it doesn't need to sell data. Plus it just isn't how Tesla operates.
I wonder how long that will last. That may be their privacy policy today, but AFAIK that's merely a policy, not a binding agreement. I don't know whether anything stops them from changing their mind later, i.e., the classic rug-pull.
I appreciate Tesla's position on the matter, but I'd still rather have the collection and dissemination of the data more tightly regulated by law.
I never thought I would say that, but I would rather have my data hoarded by a crazy rightwinger Elon, than by Stellantis or VW or BMW or Hyundai or any Chinese vendors and being sold to each other plus to a dozens of incompetent or malicious middleman contractors like the one pwned recently in USA. I mean, both alternatives are crap, but 1 piece of crap is slightly better that 100 pieces of crap for the same cost. PS: never owned anything by Elon.
Since when is Tesla software great? Every time I get into a Tesla I have to spend five minutes to pair my iPhone over Bluetooth like it’s 2010. I then have to place my phone on the wireless charging pad and enjoy navigation on the small screen of my phone since it doesn’t support CarPlay. I have to make a playlist of my music before the trip since I can’t control my music safely.
This is not a conspiracy, just normal human behaviour. The loud voices are loud. People are complaining about cars that do collect data. Do you see ANY comments about any manufacturer that doesn’t do this?
The only time I’ve ever seen a comment like that was regarding older used cars.
All it can tell us is that maybe this is something tesla should market (if it’s true) rather than bullshit like “self driving”
I’m not against self driving cars, but if I can’t sit in the back of the car, legally, and read a book while it drives me to work, it’s not self driving is it?
And the DMV (Department of Motor vehicle Services) has also sold registration data. In California, and Texas, they have been fined for this - I'm unsure they aren't completely barred from using a loophole to still do that.
This is why I'm a vocal advocate for having an LLC own any vehicles you might drive. It protects you from the license-plate reading lookup as well from Flock et all. Though I don't know it guarantees you can't be looked up by insurance it's resistance by one more bit of friction. The vehicle I drive now is an old 2012 Lexus owned by Montana LLC and it also has no smart technology and very little insurance costs.
In California you can post a surety bond in lieu of insurance. I'm sure the same applies in other states with governance that is not captured by corporate interests.
Can you elaborate on this some? Afaik insurance is the only thing they would accept. I think insurance is generally a nasty scam so anything to get away from it would be pretty neat
You have to deposit $75,000 to the DMV and if you get in an accident where you're at fault you will also be on the hook for damages beyond that. You can also get a surety bond for that amount, instead of doing a cash deposit.
It used to be 35k but it was increased in late 2024 (which is good because it hadn't increased since the 70s).
But to do that you really have to hate insurers or be uninsurable. Because realistically putting that 75k in a basic HISA will yield enough interests to pay for regular car insurance and you get to keep your 75k.
Thats quite a lot more than i expected, i just have never had a good experience with insurance, everything is a long drawn fight. Probably not worth it unless under specific circumstances
They don't ask for license plates. At least through a camera tech like Flock, it isn't super easy to pick up a vin. So thinking this through more, at least having an insurance agency have your vin isn't as bad as having a flock & flock affiliated agency have your license plate - because if flock & flock affiliated dont have your vin they may never have the vin to find you via insurance company.
If you'd like to buy this data, go talk to the guys over at Inrx. They will happily give you a product demo showing point to point trips recorded by connected onstar or whatever corresponding manf connected car service.
Just don’t get a car with connected internet, or smart X in any way, which is most modern cars unfortunately, and if you do, disable the telemetry. I have a clean, cool, low mileage ~15yo car, has no screen or apps, no internet, no back camera or even digital dashboard. I put a screen that has offline CoMaps app, if I ever needed it, and its OBD connected to a local app that does usual diagnostics. Sure, there’s logging I see and it happens, but it’s all local and never shared let alone connect things gas or odometer or driving habits.
My car is much older and I used to hope it would last forever. But now I hope it dies soon enough that when I go to replace it, the options for non smart cars haven't gone away.
Like I've said here before: we need to push for legislation that bans the sale of consumer data collected by websites and manufacturers to third-parties.
We need a solution, not a Band-Aid like the "Freedom Car Act." I believe that legislators are deliberately coming up with legislation that mildly hinders, but in no way resolves the issue in order to keep their sugar-daddies freewheeling.
Talking as an eastern european: unless you live in a sunshine place (~Mediterranean) most of the 90s car already eaten by the rust + the salt used for defrosting on roads in the winter.
Also by my experience cars (except from SUVs) somehow never kept up with the road quality. Pot holes are a problem everywhere but you can see that certain brands for example japanese and korean ones never designed for deteriorating road quality (and I don't mean offroad) because... you know they just don't exist in the home market. So the tires, wheels, suspension are not as robust as they should be.
Sure _everything can be fixed_ but then your car becomes a hobby and might not everyone has an attitude and time for that.
> Talking as an eastern european: unless you live in a sunshine place (~Mediterranean) most of the 90s car already eaten by the rust + the salt used for defrosting on roads in the winter.
You can still find good examples in the UK where we have salted roads. I've paid for mine to be dinitroled. Pot holes etc are a problem here and they will affect newer vehicles too and used to go through a tyre a winter.
My wife's Ioniq 5 was hit on the bumper while it was parked. Took weeks for all parts to get to the dealer and cost thousands of dollars because sensors etc. if someone hit my 1981 Volvo 240 the same way I'm not even sure it would cause any noticable damage.
The 240 is built like a brick (both in terms of strength and looks). My dad had one when I was much younger, then he sold it for a 740. A few months after the sales, police knocked on his door and asked him a lot of questions. It turned out the purchaser had used the car in a ram-raid on a shop.
Today’s cars are safer because of the crumple zones. We romanticize the older cars but their rigidity also caused impact force to be absorbed by occupants.
Someone forgot to set the brake in their car, rolled into the back of my dads 70ish pickup. It rolled the width of a parking row, on fairly flat surface. The car had no chance obviously, but it was pretty funny seeing the damage; bumper and fender, not just a minor one you could slap out with a good fist slam either. There was zero damage to the truck
I really wanted a modern car because of the fancy automation stuff, I thought.
But it never is economical or more environmental friendly.
Whatever I saved on my old car compared to a newer one will never be less than the theoretical fuel savings on a newer car. Repair costs will never be as much (assuming you buy a popular repair friendly car). And nothing new needs to be built for me either.
I am driving a vehicle from the 90s. Works very well. Old British Vehicle so it leaks out oil everywhere but any vehicle that is more the 20 years old will be leaking oil. Have significantly less problems than the car I sold (which was 20 years newer).
Maybe the poster is saying, "There are no consequences for anyone acting in this way here, and we seem to be slipping ever more into societal moral decay, so why shouldn't I cheat to win?"
Or: "All companies are essentially gigantic conglomerates eating each others' food by selling my own and others' data to each other, so I basically have rights to their claimed assets anyway."
Or: "No company or government respects my privacy or property rights, so why should I respect theirs?"
Some of that is a form of "I am going to steal, because others are stealing", and well, if stealing becomes the norm, yeah, I would say the comment has some validity in a few words for the common citizen.
No, this is mostly out of activism. I'm angry that the law is there for one group while the rights of another group are completely neglected. That it gives me free content is just a nice side-effect, nothing more.
Sorry, but a lot of cars, even if they run Android Automotive, maintain a separate TCU/DCM with its own cellular connection that can collect vehicle information independently of Android Automotive.
I posted a flavor of this comment on an article a few months ago, but it's relevant here:
I have a seven year old Volkswagen, not financed. I'm security conscious and made sure to disable all the data collection I could find in the companion app before removing my account, turn off remote access services, dig through the infotainment to turn off what I could, etc.
Last year I requested a Carfax on it, and one of the fields in the request was current mileage. I entered an estimate like 75000 miles. On form submission, that field failed validation with red subtext along the lines of 'this is less than the last reported mileage of 75345, reported <5 or so days prior>'. Checking my odometer and looking at my past few days' trips, that was indeed accurate.
The car hadn't been to a shop or out of my possession in weeks, so I can only assume the telemetry was still dialing home and selling to third parties despite my best efforts to disable it.
Tangential, but one of the concerns I have about these 'smart' cars is they have an expiration deadline.
There's an exceedingly common type of failure I have seen myself in industrial electronics and (has happened with Tesla at least once), that some module keeps a log of some kind in a nonvolatile flash, and this flash has a limited lifecycle, which the equipment reaches at some years into its life (or earlier, if the flash came from a bad batch, or more logging happens than planned).
At this point the board usually gets bricked and replacement is very hard due to cryptographic handshakes between components.
They've become cell phones on wheels. I'm disappointed with what vehicles (and phones too!) have become.
I share the sentiment. I want a new car, but only if I can guarantee all telemetry is hard disabled. But I don’t have the kind of money to buy a new car and risk bricking it. Luckily I’m pretty handy, so I’ll have to keep my 2014< cars forcefully running as long as I can.
I have non concerns about having a built in button to phone emergency services. I don’t even mind if it auto rings in a crash. I’m even happy to provide position to the emergency service in the event of dialing them.
Manufacturers use this capacity as an excuse to push more adtech penny and dime data abuse, knowing half the world will blame the government.
Your cell phone could easily call for help in a crash without the car being involved at all.
Not if I'm unconscious?
From a cellphone’s perspective a crash = extreme acceleration with different vectors vs a dropped phone, they can also listen for broken glass etc. So even with GPS off that’s detectable.
iPhone 14+ and Android 12+ https://en.androidsis.com/How-to-activate-automatic-accident...
Interesting info/link, thanks for sharing.
Generally I read your comment that a dropped phone only hits the floor once, therefore there is only one vector and the car always overturns/flips/turns and therefore there are multiple vectors measurable in the car?
I am not convinced yet, it might be possible without GPS, at least to some degree of error (false positives and false negatives). The info in the link requires GPS to be switched on. hmm
Other drivers will phone it in. This isn't a concern for me at all, but I suppose it could be if you lived in a low population area.
other drivers will assume someone else already called it in and drive past
Good god thats a bleak thought, where do you live that people behave like that?!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect
Not when you go off the side into a ditch
iPhones actually can. I'm guessing some Androids have an equivalent.
Apple Watch for sure. It seems like you have been in an accident. Hit this button to cancel or EMS will be called.
I'll take the risk.
Disabling the antennas is the only way to be sure. There will typically be a coax connection that you can cap with a terminator. GPS can be merged with other radios you might not want to lose but suitable splitters are available.
GPS uses a different frequency and a very weak signal. The antenna is typically separate from the others but it's very small <5 mm¹. It can be on the same board with other antennas with 3…4 cm separation between them. Also, we tested a GSM tracker and it still worked with a mismatched antenna. This was in Eastern Europe where cell tower power is quite strong. You have to completely remove the antenna and terminate its connection to be 100% sure. If you have coax cables with external antennas, you're lucky. The worst case scenario is when they're embedded in the infotainment system with amtennas and everything. This is also a cost cutting measure, so it's very likely to be used. The infotainment system is usually ideally placed under the windshield for undisturbed signal reception. But there is still hope to completely cover its back side and edges with aluminium foil tape.
1. https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/gnss-chip-antenna-hooku...
Ford has GPS with FM on the same cable. They have splitters for this arrangement. This is why they transitioned to stubby antennas for better GPS and good enough FM.
I thought most would use their “shark fin” on the roof for everything (if there is one but there usually is). Terminating on the other end somewhere with a color coded FAKRA connector.
That's quite far away for the weak GPS signal over RF cable, but they still do it. Or maybe the GPS unit and LTE modem are also in the shark fin or nearby and they use a serial, CAN FD/XL or single pair ethernet connection to it? Another choice is in the center of the dashboard under the winshield or under the mirror.
From teardowns, there’s more than just antennae in those shark fins, so might amplify or LNA or whatever within the shark fin.
>aluminium foil tape
uh-oh
> disappointed
One of the most extreme understatement in history.
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> turn off remote access services, dig through the infotainment to turn off what I could
This is never enough. You can't trust a software switch. You need to remove the hardware capability if you want to make sure the car isn't spying on you. In the best case, the telematics box has it's own fuse, and that may be enough. In other cases, you need to find the box and unplug it. The service manual will have it's location. In some cars it's easily accessible, in others less so and you need to remove the glove box or part of the dash. Dealers will probably refuse to do it, my advice would be to DIY or find an independent mechanic who will do it.
Find the telematic's antenna, and put a 50ohm resistor across it. It can scream into it's own private void.
It seems like this is not enough:
https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/simpler-solution-for-dis...
The most reliable way to permanently silence the cellular modem is to pull the relevant fuse. In the above case, this also disables the microphone, which I think is a positive. Unplugging the DCM entirely, however, seems to disable to right speaker, which is wired through the DCM for some reason.
>Unplugging the DCM entirely, however, seems to disable to right speaker, which is wired through the DCM for some reason.
I'm cynical, but unnecessarily coupling the ability to send telemetry with some feature people definitely want seems like exactly the sort of thing that would be done intentionally.
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>right speaker, which is wired through the DCM for some reason
This is to provide cell phone audio during calls – if you're already inside your dashboard to remove the DCM (modem), there is an easy pin-out to restore the right speaker's music audio (which varies across Toyota models, but usually is as simple as placing a jumper across two pins of the unplugged wiring harness.
Would be darkly hilarious if they were using the speaker or rear defroster as a cellular antenna.
(Yeah, technically horrible but I’m sure someone will find a way)
Funny enough i was just recently thinking about how most defrosters would probably make a great antenna with minor modifications
Just recently? The industry has been thinking about it[1][2][3][4] since before most of us were born.
[1] https://patents.google.com/patent/US3576576A/en
[2] https://patents.google.com/patent/US3611388A/en
[3] https://patents.google.com/patent/US3971029A/en
[4] https://patents.google.com/patent/US4095228A/en
They get off the frequency when heated, might not pass FCC testing.
I Have No Antenna, and I Must Transmit.
I am stealing this for the name of my first album.
Here you go:
https://imgur.com/a/AR2iLjw
It varies by car. For my Honda, I believe disconnecting the antenna is enough. I looked at a Toyota and the antenna is shared. To disable the phone-home you had to disconnect a box … but that’s difficult. The box is also designed to call 911 or 999 emergency services and is connected to the microphone and one of the speakers. You have to rewire those if you want to use the microphone with your cellphone or play any stereo sound. Do your research before buying or disconnecting things.
Your mileage went from VW->telematics vendor->broker->carfax, thats the chain it usually follows. The fuse stops it but the real issue is the owner is the only one without the record.
You could probably find some interesting info if you send out some privacy requests through the chain. LexisNexis and Verisk are consumer reporting agencies, so they have to provide you a disclosure on request. Start there.
Is there usually a fuse that just turns off the telemetry? I would be surprised if that is the case. I could see the design being "if you turn this fuse off to turn off telemetry, you'll also lose these functions: ..." and if they did it "right" they'd make the car non-functional.
My car is from 2011 and I do wonder if there is any telemetry in it.
Just looked up my 2016 Toyota. My car has no telemetry module, and for cars that do there are companies that sell harnesses that plug into the module, terminating the antennas and/or cutting power without affecting anything else
There’s probably a fuse to turn off the cellular radio that transmits the data. Whether that’s all it covers may vary from car to car. Or in some models it’s probably possible to just disconnect the radio entirely.
Yeah an electrical fuse for telemetry seems really odd. Even without malice it would be strange if disconnecting power to some part of the computer only affected telemetry.
I could see a fuse for cellular comms, be presumably that would also disable maps, contacting emergency services in an accident, etc. which might be an acceptable tradeoff.
My Ford has a dedicated fuse for accessory packages that include the modem. Mine doesn't have any other options that share that fuse so it is functionally the telemetry fuse.
Probably has something to do with the fact that car companies are obsessed with having the thing modularized, each module needing a fuse.
Telemetry is usually a standalone module. Heres one off a 26 Hyundai Palisade -- Telematics (DCU) Part num: 96510P9100 firmware (OTA updatable) 01F.7.CAN.3.000.18.714.9
Its only job is to detect harsh acceleration and brake events. Probably being sold to your insurer.
So I first read this comment and thought is looked like AI and thought I’d give the benefit of the doubt. Then I saw this where there is no doubt: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49687774
I thought, I wonder if it’s the same guy? Sure enough.
Stop it.
He did acknowledge he posted something similar elsewhere a few months ago. I found his comment useful.
andy99 isn't replying to my post here
No
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Can you explain how the statement below makes sense?
>The fuse stops it but the real issue is the owner is the only one without the record.
If I take your two sentence comment and remove one sentence it also is non-sensical. Stop removing context.
>Your mileage went from VW->telematics vendor->broker->carfax, thats the chain it usually follows. The fuse stops it but the real...
Prior commentary advised removing the fuse to stop the telemetry. This comment points out that the chain of information flow precludes the owner of the car.
>the real issue is the owner is the only one without the record
I don't understand what "the record" is referring to here. The mileage is presumably still on the odometer of the car. So what is "the record" that the owner does not have and how is that causing the owner an issue?
Presumably the mileage is a subset of the data that makes up "the record"?
Oh, sweet summer child.
You don't really think they added all that circuitry and a cell connection just to collect odometer information, do you?
> how is that causing the owner an issue?
Welp, it was a huge issue for a lot of owners when GM OnStar started sharing real-time driving data with insurance companies.
Supposedly they're stopping that, but a lot of the damage is done.
You have to read it in context with what it is referring to, and perhaps to know a little bit about the issue. In that respect, it's like a lot of conversations around here.
I read this as:
"Removing the fuse that provides power to the telematics module can stop data collection from a vehicle, but the real issue is that the putative owner is the only one who isn't instantly privy to all of the collected data."
In any case, the complaint above was obviously about AI usage, and there are a lot of good reasons to use AI for editing your words, starting with (for example) if you're not a native speaker.
Weird -- usually VW likes to falsify its data, so I am surprised this data was so accurate.
Every business likes data collection, until they don't.
At that point "opt out" starts to feel like a UI feature rather than an actual description of what the car is doing
Right?! There is so much of this! In my country, for financial products, there needs to be a very clear label with some obligatory fields (we don't allow pharma commercials, but I think Americans know this as the details rattled off after a pharma commercial). It's time we get this for any tech. Companies just let you opt-out, but some weasel words in the terms and conditions let them still do 90% what they did before you hit the switch.
I have been thinking of upgrading from my 2003 Corolla to an electric (not Tesla). The Corolla hasn't had a single repair problem in 23 years!
My main motivation to get a better car was, DD goes to a super prestigious college and it seems degrading to put their bumper sticker on a 23 year old car! But I guess I won't get another car. Serves you right mfr mfrs!
See my other comment, but the fuse pulling stuff still works on GM EVs and disables connectivity, but the telematics unit may still be collecting offline to batch upload.
That's why it's better to replace it with a blown fuse instead, so that a helpful repair shop doesn't replace it when they see it missing.
This is why I pulled the fuse on the Data Communications Module (DCM) on my car. The device that transmits the telemetry simply doesn't get any juice.
What did you do, or what are you going to do? That would piss me off until i found the antenna and broke it
Carfax also can report estimated mileage, but it might have a different flag in the system that allows override.
I've been handed a Carfax on my own car that has a reported mileage much greater than the actual mileage on the car, and the car has not been out of my possession.
The most horrible part this crime is I read somewhere That the amount the car companies get for spying on your locations is some pathetic paltry amount like $1-$5 one time. These car companies sell you out to insurance companies and such so they can collect data and use it AGAINST you. Ghouls everywhere now.
Random Public data:
Honda sold data on roughly 97,000 cars to Verisk for $25,920—amounting to about 26 cents per car.
Hyundai sold data on about 1.7 million vehicles for roughly $1 million—about 61 cents per car
That doesn’t smell right. Why develop the telemetry and go to all of the trouble for such a paltry return? That probably wouldn’t even cover the legal consulation to cover their ass, much less go through the trouble of implementing and selling the telemetry.
It would be cheaper to do nothing if that were true.
There are less questionable things they can do with all that data: I'm sure it's really useful to figure out how electrical and mechanical faults correlate with driving conditions / weather / region etc. The result from this is just a better car in the next iteration.
Then someone offers them $1 each for a fleet of 1M cars, who is going to turn down $1M for a few TB of data?
To your first point, fair enough.
To your second point, surely they’ve considered the hit to their relationship with their customers before selling for $1/car. Surely the trust between them and their buyers is worth far, far more than that.
Even assuming maximum greed, is every car manufacturer really so short-sighted as to break that trust for so small of a return?
We need to start thinking more like the average evil C-suite. We live in the golden age of fraud. Not my words. There's probably some sort of circular deal where the people that enacted this data sharing personally benefit in some massive financial way. The low financial benefit from the parent company side is probably to avoid regulatory eyeballs.
something around 50% of Uber's profits now come from their "private" owned insurance Company. That, of course, does not have to disclose how they are making money. Even though Uber is their only customer.
There is probably some sort of similar deal happening here.
I oversimplified this, and actually it's a lot closer to what happens with any digital service.
Rather than saying "give us 1$ and we'll sell you a customer's data" it was more like "provide the navigation software and we'll let you keep the data". It probably seems like an elegant solution: as long as the driver needs navigation they "pay" for it with their data. It's really no different from how gmail or facebook works.
Telemetry is used to push service, which is the big money maker for dealerships. Roadside assistance, maps subscriptions, driving data for market research.
Selling it is pure icing on top.
All it would need is a wi-fi antenna internally, and then it could connect to an open wi-fi network anywhere. And it's going to be pretty much impossible to avoid ever driving your car within range of some open network.
It would have to find an open Wi-Fi network that isn't gated behind a captive portal, which is very rare. Rare enough that most telemetry would be too stale to be useful.
Cable ISPs such as Spectrum sell capacity on their customers routers for such situations, including ‘smart’ appliances.
Xfinity (Comcast) does the same, and the LG TV data leak demonstrated it joining these open “xfinitywifi” SSIDs to transmit telemetry home (edit: retracted, see below subthread).
You can see a map of these nodes with https://wigle.net/
Please provide a source for this claim.
While LG TVs send a lot of private data when connected to the internet, I'm not aware of any credible reports that they automatically connect to open or partner-provided wifi networks without a user choosing to do so.
It's certainly a threat to keep an eye open for, but it seems manufacturers haven't quite stooped to that low yet.
I stand corrected and misremembered comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49604765 and thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49592375
It has not been demonstrated actively in use, only that it is possible and trivial to implement. Statement with regards to it being demonstrated retracted.
I stand by the concept that any consumer IoT device could join these networks, and the end user would never know. The only legal solution to this problem statement is to physically disable the radio on the device if assurance is desired.
> which is very rare.
This depends a lot on the region/country. IN the US, open WiFi is unusual but it's pretty common in parts of asia, for example.
> I'm security conscious and made sure to disable all the data collection I could find in the companion app before removing my account, turn off remote access services, dig through the infotainment to turn off what I could, etc.
Android Auto, Apple CarPlay, OEM mobile app...Bluetooth??
Consider the business case of leased Comcast (as the largest ISP in the US) modems broadcasting open side-channel xfinitywifi SSIDs...essentially everywhere.
Try finding the fuse and pulling it. It will be in the manual.
I would be very surprised if it was that simple - systems in modern cars are so interlinked that I would expect that pulling a fuse would cause something else to break, resulting in dash lights or broken functionality.
In my car it's on the same circuit as the infotainment system which does kinda make sense but also, damn them.
> it's on the same circuit as the infotainment system
isn't it not-funny that the super-invasive Google profiling and ID checks are also part of "Google Play" ?
It's possible to find workarounds for things like this. One example: https://www.autoharnesshouse.com/69018.html
Typically it’s tied to other components and pulling the fuse will take out other things like infotainment, speakers, etc.
Very sadly, pulling the DCM fuse in a modern Toyota Yaris (EU/JP market) kills Bluetooth and front-right speaker to
Where was the car serviced? Antennas or not, the dealer might just plug in and upload everything during service.
> Antennas or not, the dealer might just plug in and upload everything during service.
You should have an empty glovebox as well when you take it in for service if you don't trust the shop.
If you have registration / insurance paperwork, you're now on that shop's mailing list and can expect to get "$15 off your next oil change ..." flyers in the mail.
> I can only assume the telemetry was still dialing home and selling to third parties
Not necessarily. Obligatory roadworthiness test collects this data.
Yet if you overestimated the mileage you would’ve been none the wiser!
Sometimes there's a fuse you can pull to disable the telematics (or whatever the heck a given car company calls it).
Lots of automotive OEMs want that specific kind of information for generic reasons (how many of what model made it to what mileage under what circumstances) that are entirely reasonable. Lots of them also want that info for warranty related reasons (you've hit the mileage limit and we won't do anything for you anymore). But, my state of Michigan is starting a program to evaluate replacing registration fees with mileage charges to account for the additional wear and tear on the roads from EVs that don't pay gas taxes to fund road repairs. This would require some kind of verification of mileage, which we can't currently do during emissions testing, since it doesn't exist here. Legally required data retention is becoming a bigger and bigger issue, particularly in light of the driver monitoring requirement starting in MY27 vehicles by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act terms. That will presumably be integrated into any black box recording in a crash and probably subpoenaed in any dispute going forward.
In other news, I think I'll be taking a trip to somewhere down south to find a nice, used 1999 F350 dually with a manual transmission, since they're going to cease to exist shortly...
I know you're not the culprit, but it's annoying to see crap like this (highly invasive tracking, ostensibly for slightly more efficient tax collection), when far cheaper, better efforts (like Rhode Island's attempt to add tolls for just semis -- 98-99% of their freeway maintenance costs) are killed before they have a chance to prove themselves.
Couldn't you put some sort of faraday cage around the antenna?
What happened to just pulling (the mfr's) sim card?
It’s often an eSIM
Not trivial, not impossible
that's so creepy. But how can the connect to the servers, unless the car connects to your phone or some other gateway?
"Resistance is futile." See also: LG TVs, etc.
It’s not futile. Write your congressperson and state representatives. If enough people do this around the country, laws will eventually be passed to prevent it.
This is why there are moral panics about things people feel in their guts: most people are reasonably easily unsettled and distracted by queer people, people who look different, people their people don’t trust being in charge.
It works. Most people are happier focusing and holding forth on that and repeating familiar statements than they are talking to congressional staff about policy.
Your car that you paid a lot for and you like and have positive useful experiences with every day? That’s going to be way farther down the list of things to worry about.
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I'd like to point out that the CA assembly has passed AB-1542 and it is likely going to be signed by the governor this week. This would make the sale and sharing of "sensitive" personal information illegal, and one of the sensitive personal categories is geolocation data that can map an individual to within a 1850-ft radius.
In my understanding, this pretty much makes this type of driver data illegal to sell or share. CalPrivacy's enforcement division has their eye on connected car manufacturers already, so we'll see what they do with that.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.x...
Another note for Californians -- the California DROP (delete request and opt-out platform) takes VINs as one of the inputs.
https://privacy.ca.gov/drop/
Honda found a work around where they show you a warning on your dash if you disable data collection, similar to maintenance being due or low fuel.
Well they'll still sell the data but "anonymised" like with phone location data. Better, but not fixed.
Not true. If they do that they are violating the law and that will show up in the audits. They have to delete the data, all records associated with that identifier, now including any 3rd party data that they bought from other brokers and did not collect or buy originally. There have been many loopholes for years but they are all being closed.
It's a complete shadow economy, users don't want it and mostly don't know it. But sometimes it surfaces, ie we had a public gathering in my village about the plans to restructure one of our main streets, since people don't feel safe walking an biking there naturally we want it 1 way or 30 km/u. In response rhe person from the municipality whipped up some graphs with speed profiles along the street as it is now. Naturally I ask how they get that data and he says "you can just order it online, I think from Google and Apple originally? Oh, yeah sometimes you can identify things, like a cop once speeded along this road and he could see his datapoint (a far outlier)!" Nobody saw any problem with this. And it's such a small step away from direct actions based on this data (although people would probably take action themselves the moment they understand there are direct downsides for them.)
I did a GDPR request to KIA and I was amazed what they collected.
Here's some examples: How long I let the car warm up before driving, G force around every GPS corner, acceleration rates, max speeds, every GPS datapoint etc.
How can this be stopped, from a technical perspective? Can I wrap the comms in a Faraday cage?
Obviously it would be better to have this action be illegal. But with legal privacy protections eroding in the US and other countries, it seems prudent to have a better understanding of the systems involved in the immoral surveillance.
I've had good luck with pulling service manuals, finding the telematics antenna connectors, and unplugging them. It's popular to pull the telematics module fuse, but that typically disables internal microphones and GPS that are used by android auto and carplay. This severely degrades features spouses expect to just work. The antenna pulling is a much lighter touch.
The amount of times I see "I'd like to do the right thing but my spouse isn't on board" is mind boggling.
It's wild how convenience trumps everything and then we look back to say, "we should have done better."
Okay it's a red herring here. I also like to use carplay and the phone's GPS is truly awful to use. I also like to dictate texts and take calls in my car. These are things that don't need to be sacrificed if a scalpel is used in place of a butcher's knife.
Sometimes it helps to have someone with their priorities in order keeping a reality check on people who don't always stay grounded.
The convenience here for you is CarPlay though. You could instead use a different more accurate gps device you plugin that doesnt have the data leak issues concerned in articles like this one. Then if you really needed you could pull out a sort of external monitor stick it over the other display when carplaying and when needing car-vital features you need the car display for, pull over and temporarily do that thing then pull your extra monitor out again and keep going.
I think maybe being grounded has changed - I would be comfortable doing what I described but I imagine your comfort with your preexisting solution means your ground has shifted and a reality check means you woudl rather give away your data than take the higher friction option?
I think most people would not be on board with your solution, but in general to your point I would say everyone draws the line somewhere different.
Yes there are many (maybe most) who will not give up their comforts or risk modifying their vehicle in order to make it more private... but trying to play the judge in a made-up internet game of altruism olympics is not going to convert many people either.
If I came off judgy or higher than thou, I apologize, it wasn't my attempt.
I meant to gracefully share what I did, and hope to have no offended anyone.
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> features spouses expect to just work
Never underestimate the risks of spousal dissatisfaction.
You should be using a 50 ohm 1 watt dummy load / termination. It's better at attenuating the signal than leaving the antenna unplugged.
You're implying the stub of an exposed coax inside a faraday cage is capable of establishing a link with cell towers. This doesn't really pass fermi tests and I've never observed it myself, just read the paranoid concerns of people online.
Regardless, taping some foil around the connectors with the foil making okay contact with the metal chassis is more than enough attenuation at sub GHz microwave to remove this concern without having to source specialty terminations and crimpers (or worse, non-reversible damage to the OEM cable assemblies by repurposing their terminations). I've done the foil+tape on some of my vehicles, but it hasn't made a difference in binary "does it connect or not?" testing.
Best to use a termination, to avoid the power that would have gone into the antenna from reflecting back into the transmitter output and damaging the output driver transistors. Damage is no bad thing if you do want to permanently disable the transmitter, but not so good if you want it to be reversible. Chances of damage due to reflections is probably low given the relatively low power being transmitted, but best not to take the risk if it can easily be avoided with a termination.
I agree it's a good practice. However in this case I consider the possibility of frying the amplifier a knock-on benefit. The fucking thing should have never been made.
If a hypothetical future owner feels strongly about it then replacing a telematics module in the dash is much easier than replacing harness runs. I somehow doubt I would sell one of my vehicles to someone who would do that though.
I wonder if this increases or reduces the value of the car???
If your buyer is an institution like Carmax or similar, lower.
If your buyer is the end owner, probably increase a little bit unless they are surveillancemaxxing.
A good question. I'm not really concerned with the answer since I don't plan on selling my cars. I'm sure a good population would pay to not have their car spy on them and I can think of very few that would pay to have it turned on.
Easily reversible mods only affect price for suckers anyway.
To whom? The owner of the car, or the manufacturer and "their partners"?
It is possible to remove the hardware itself that is responsible for this, but depending on the car it can very involved: https://arkadiyt.com/2026/05/13/removing-the-modem-and-gps-f...
> How can this be stopped, from a technical perspective?
It can't. Not realistically.
It can be stopped by legislation. But that would require politicians who have our interests as a priority rather than the various industries. So not going to happen anytime soon.
You probably can't make this reliable across every modern car without breaking something, but that's different from technically impossible
What sucks is that at least with my car, if you pull their access, you also lose all your remote access as well, and the ability to receive updates.
Why does a car need "remote access" and to "receive updates?" I'd consider this a bonus side effect.
People who live in cold or hot places like to prestart the climate control in their car.
When I was a lad we walked out to the car and did that with the key. In the snow. It wasn't that bad and, despite what you may have heard, was not in fact uphill both ways.
I'm sure you take advantage of a lot of modern conveniences that you didn't have as a lad, and you would prefer to not give those up.
Yeah, but I still have a soft spot for the old classics like privacy, autonomy and dignity.
I don't want to give up my modern conveniences, but I have and will if forced to choose.
Why do you need remote access to your car? What updates does your car need?
It’s practical to see battery level so I can optimise the electricity price at which I charge it.
Although it wasn’t worth the cost of the 3 year subscription so I now just estimate the charge status based on the charge’s power consumption.
If the car is at 10% battery, it may be worth charging at .15 or .3€/kWh. If it’s at 70% charge, I’ll wait until the price drops to .005€/kWh. The whole thing is automated in HA.
> What updates does you car need?
These cars are more software than hardware now. And like everything else in the software industry, every product gets released incomplete and patched later.
Although the correct solution would be a USB port somewhere to insert a patch file rather that over-the-air updates that might happen while driving.
You can do stuff like like turn it on to heat or cool the cabin, live track it's location, lock/unlock doors, open/close trunk, and updates are mostly for the infotainment systemn and driving assists.
Their is a cell modem in the car, so all these features are available anywhere the car has cell service.
> You can do stuff like like turn it on to heat or cool the cabin, live track it's location, lock/unlock doors, open/close trunk, and updates are mostly for the infotainment systemn and driving assists.
Are any of those things more important than your security (e.g., against hackers) and privacy?
It definitely can be stopped. For example, China sells cars internally at cheaper prices, but they are locked to prevent using them outside the country. However, there are people who can hack and unlock them allowing operating in any country. But maybe it would be illegal in the West, I don't know. Removing the modem is an easier task.
You learn animal husbandry and join the Amish.
You drive an used car from 2016, that is much easier.
It should be as mundane as pulling the SIM card from a phone (or must be)
Remember that story a week ago „everything I own, owned“? That’s one way.
Simple: don't own a vehicle with this capability.
Much like owning a home without an HOA attached, it is becoming harder and harder to meet this requirement.
It also seems to conflict with `right-to-repair` laws if the capability is legally required.
>Much like owning a home without an HOA attached, it is becoming harder and harder to meet this requirement.
The near universal proliferation of owner's associations and management groups and whatnot for developments larger than ~1ac (the EPA threshold, some states/towns have lower) is something you can lay at the feet of the Clean Water Act and it's implementation and precedents over the following decades.
The exact area of the buildings, the driveways, the community park and gazebo, etc, etc, are necessary features of the site plan that makes the math that is required to meet stormwater/environmental requirements. And and some legal entity has to be responsible for that in perpetuity. Enter the HOA. This is also why HOAs often won't allow you to expand your driveway or add a non-permeable patio, it could (prob not, but still) ruin the environmental calculations they're responsible for enforcing as a condition.
I'm not nearly as familiar with car regulatory stuff but I would bet a lot of money that they're using OTA telematics to check some sort of compliance box...
I believe it was Strongtowns reporting a few months back that HOAs are generally being driven by developers, the only folks with (a) land to build in bulk; (b) capital, relationships, and experience to get fully through permitting in bulk; (c) building a substantial fraction of SFH.
Strongtowns is happy to follow the money and incentives on all sorts of other issues. Why do they just throw up their hands and say "it's the developers" on this issue?
Developers don't do anything that costs money, like set up an HOA, without a reason. The developers create the HOA because you need your >1ac residential development to pass stormwater permitting. While you theoretically could make each individual .25ac parcel you're putting a house on compliant it's infinitely cheaper to just ignore all that, grade everything toward the road, dig a ditch, send the contents of the ditch through your stormwater treatment features, build in a little margin to those items, show the permitting authority the numbers that prove it passes with flying colors and when some jerk says "but what if X Y Z changes" you point to the excess you built in and tell them to GFY.
Now, where it really gets evil is when you start really pinching pennies or where the rules change over the course of the process making your numbers not work. Say you've got a lot of grade, a lot of rainfall, a lot of stormwater you gotta "treat". Well, you start adding rules to the HOA. Require certain parts of the lots remains grass or planter or whatever. Disallow patios, but do allow wood decks because the municipality considers those pervious, etc, etc. Or maybe the results you've got are marginal but you throw the bureaucrats a bone by saying you'll disallow car-ports and sheds in the HOA rules to prevent people from adding impervious surface. Or maybe you're uphill of some wetlands but not close enough to be regulated by default you promise to disallow working on cars and require people pick up their pet waste and not use lawn fertilizer or some other laundry list of certain things in order to make the local town's wetlands people comfortable not raising objection and claiming jurisdiction.
And of course, however these rules and plans shake out, the HOA is responsible for implementation in perpetuity.
Not just storm water, but also things like maintenance of 'common areas', roads, and snow removal. Many small municipalities are budget strapped and don't want to be responsible for plowing/surfacing the new little 1/8 of a mile culdesac the developer created to build their 'neighborhood'.
In carving up the 5 acres the developer purchased, the 30 houses they squeezed in left some remainder that wasn't buildable or odd shaped, so this now becomes a lame 'park' or some other space that requires maintenance.
I read all my local municipal meeting minutes, and at least around here, permitting and ordinances control all the environmental/nuisance stuff, so I can't really explain why HOAs go beyond the collective expenses into the draconian rules.
>so I can't really explain why HOAs go beyond the collective expenses into the draconian rules.
Grass is really good at filtering/absorbing/treating stormwater so you might have to force everyone to keep their lawns lawn because the way you've got the lots graded you need that little bit of extra because it lets you make your "shit parcel" where the basin will go a little smaller and squeeze one extra house into the development.
Beyond that I think what a lot of it comes down to is that local governments are invariably run by a lot of the same kinds of busybodies that HOAs attract and the way rules are written these days the "normal permitting process" exists only to let the useful idiots think that just about everything isn't discretionary. There's always some gotcha or twistable phrase so everything goes through a special permit or variance of some sort. That opens up all sorts of off the record dealing wherein the developer agrees to throw everything and the kitchen sink into the initial HOA rules and the Karens in government make sure those things are in there before deciding how to exercise their discretionary approval.
There’s no reason that sort of compliance needs an HOA. Most places already have building codes enforced by mandatory government inspections for major renovations.
It really isn't. FB Marketplace is literally awash in perfectly serviceable vehicles that don't and can't phone home. For the budget conscious among us it's also significantly cheaper to buy a "clapped out" used older car and refresh the drive train than buying new or late model.
Besides the irony of a privacy-conscious user using facebook to buy a car... those "perfectly-serviceable vehicles" are 1. no longer manufactured, and 2. will not last forever.
Unless a new age of unconnected cars becomes a reality in the near future, I don't see this being a long-term solution.
"will not last forever" doesn't comport with observed reality to date. There are literally model A's still on the road. Barring true oddities there doesn't appear to be a model of production vehicle that has gone extinct at any point in automotive history. Anyway, three of my cars are older than I am, and I am not a young man. Buying into their shit is optional.
Finding parts for older cars is a very real concern, aside from a handful of cars that are very popular with enthusiasts.
So pick a vehicle you can get parts for if you're worried, you've literally highlighted the solution to the problem you're claiming exists.
I meant to say their availability will not last forever.
How do you think right-to-repair intersects with cars?
An obvious thing may be to say the software must be published or the spec released, but we've had computers in cars since the 80s. It seems like a tall task but people can and do reverse engineer entire ECU systems (See Trionic Tuning)
Another seemingly very obvious one - requiring manufacturers to publish specifications regarding ALL OBD interface options. Of course this immediately runs into trouble. Saab for example gated features of the security system to prevent key reprogramming, swapping of certain components without a dial out to the internet using specific saab software that runs on a laptop and interfaces.
> How do you think right-to-repair intersects with cars?
Strongly. You don't own the thing you purchased if you can't legally repair it or legally obtain the knowledge to repair it. At beat you're paying an overpriced lease and granting a liability waiver.
I tend to agree. In my mind, it would be pretty cost efficient to put a builtin- system diagnostic utility in all new vehicles that provide at least moderately good tooling for the ODB. T
You own something if you can sell it.
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I want a car that doesn't collect the data, not one that gives a pinky promise not to sell still collected data.
When given the choice between privacy and convenience, the great majority of consumers choose convenience over and over again.
I'm not sure what the solution is, but it's not going to be market based if you look at any recent trends. Interest in privacy is unfortunately a niche concern outside of places like HN.
Anyone who has tried to market a privacy oriented product knows what I am talking about.
Is it that the friction to use privacy is too high and not that interest in privacy is actually a niche concern?
I imagine its friction and not indicative of interest itself.
Which brand? And what's to stop them from changing your opt in toggle on after an update as we've seen countless companies do time and time again?
Since 2008 they have not changed the policy. But sure, the policy could be changed if they changed management. Tesla, to answer your question.
Haven't they been caught snooping on customers before with their in car surveillance?
Which brand is that if you don't mind me asking?
Tesla
https://www.reuters.com/technology/tesla-workers-shared-sens...
Thanks for the laugh. Tesla recorded people having sex in their garage.
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That’s a lot of words coming from a very angry place. Frankly I’m surprised and disappointed that this hasn’t been flagged yet.
Congrats you free speech absolutist! You got my comment flagged, but the good thing is everybody with above room temperature IQ can infer what a [flagged] comment probably said based on context :)
Found the Musk Stan. It’s perfectly fine to be angry with a political trillionaire who did all of the aforementioned things. Keep being disappointed, that’s going to be your natural state when this dust settles.
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but you agree he's personally responsible for at least like a million though right?
Are you being sarcastic? Hard to tell online. I don’t know the exact numbers, like I said. I know it’s non-zero because of simple logic. That’s all I need to know to form an opinion on the guy.
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lol sure - provide their terms and maybe we can believe this trust me bro attitude
The "genie out of the bottle" argument has been used in the ongoing AI-or-no-AI, we're-so-cooked/we're-so-back debate among software engineers, something like: you can't undo technological advances nor would you want to, so best cope with this new reality.
And there are technological "advances" I would very much like to undo. One of them being social media, another being modern cars. Automobiles peaked when they were purely mechanical. An average American high schooler could understand all its systems, and many did. When they started becoming LANs on wheels beginning in the 90s, they became necessary millstones around their owners' necks, and these days they're as inscrutable as a smartphone, just as user-hostile, and just as tethered to vendor services. I think my father was speaking from a place of wisdom when he groused about computers in automobiles.
And no, EVs are actually simpler than ICE engines, their drivetrain being basically a battery, a set of electric motors, and maybe some variable resistors to control speed. An EV that is purely electromechanical and operable via analog controls would be a godsend, but it's not going to happen under current regulatory environments.
Two different things are getting called "car data" here.
Facts about the car: VIN, spec, recall status, odometer. Attested by someone other than the owner. Outlives every owner and the owner is the last to have it, if at all.
Facts about the driver: speed, location, timestamp. Thats what GM sold, the fix is to not collect it but OEMs seem to take 'anonymization' approach.
The DRIVER act treats both as the same which is why it fails to fix anything. The second needs a ban. The first needs the opposite - especially as we take the driver out of the vehicle - an authoritative record of the vehicle. How do we expect AVs to have adoption when the only safety certification is the company's press release?
That‘ll happen when you don‘t have meaningful data protection laws.
All European car manufacturers pull a crazy amount of telemetry data from your car.
Either via permanent 4G/5G link or during service intervals in the shop.
Source: I analyzed these data as an intern for one.
Can you describe it? I'm assuming speed, acceleration, GPS, infotainment use.
Surely its not sending backup camera footage, chair recline position, turn signal usage.
My question is why, with their protection laws, Smart TVs and Smart Cars are still sold in the EU?
Do they do the same spying on the models/units produced for sale in EU? It’s not actually a necessary part of the operation of the device, so it makes sense they’d be able to sell them without it.
For cars they most certainly do.
My guess is lobbies buying the political leaders.
HN on average is a little behind on the general EU "privacy" stance (though I saw some recent topic about that here). EU was about privacy, a few decades ago. Nowadays it did a complete U-turn and legislates mandatory anti-privacy union-wide laws every year.
- Chat Control law, now all messaging must be intercepted and monitored.
- eIDAS law, mandating that web-browser vendors must now accept state issued root certificates, so that states can selectively and without any legal procedure deploy MITM attacks at will.
- ADDW law, mandating that all new cars must a permanent mandatory camera and microphone surveillance module inside a car, which can't be disabled by law (bye-bye insurance if you will). There also other fun things in it like mandatory autobraking, mandatory auto lane-assist etc.
- ProtectEU laws, demanding backdoors to emails and such (maybe it's the same as Chat Control, not sure).
- AI Act legalizes AI surveillance over CCTV recordings without any judicial approval.
- European Media Freedom (duh) Act legalizes deployment of shit like Pegasus against journalists.
I'm pretty sure I'm missing a lot here too. You get the picture. EU is getting fast track into Stazi 2.0, everyone is fine with it, "because children" /s
Breathtaking levels of misinformation here.
There is no EU law that mandates "all messaging must be intercepted and monitored."
There is no EU law mandating permanent, non-disableable cameras and microphones in cars.
ProtectEU is not a law, not related to email and does not demand any "backdoors."
The AI Act bans real-time facial/biometric recognition in public places... which is a good thing. It does not "legalize AI surveillance"... quite the opposite.
EMFA does not authorize the deployment of spyware and they have publicly condemned the use of Pegasus specifically.
There is always a citizen who honestly thinks that emperor is good and loves the citizens. The reality is that emperor loves the citizens that love the emperor and will do everything to find and destroy the citizens that don’t love the emperor. History books are full of such examples.
Right now I am repairing old car that does not track me, does not film me and doesn’t try to drive me. It’s a such a great joy to drive it without stupid beeping and automatic wheel movements. Especially without suicidal steering in construction sites when the modern system fails.
> There is no EU law mandating permanent, non-disableable cameras
Too late for that, see the new laws for new cars.
Two can play this game.
Chat Control - a) it is a law, mandatory in whole EU (because it is a "EU Regulation", and that is a law); b) I was indeed to broad and made a mistake, for now only not E2EE messages must be intercepted and monitored. E2EE is on a the chopping block in Chat Control 2.0 which is being drafted, in progress.
Advanced Driver Distraction Warning (ADDW) - a) it is EU Regulation and so it is a law; b) ADDW mandates a non-disableable surveillance camera (not sure about microphone) inside a car.
ProtectEU is indeed Chat Control plus extra, so here I was incorrect. Encrypted emails are temporarily safe, until Chat Control 2.0 is passed. And given how they bruteforced CC 1.0 in multiple blatant retries, it will eventually pass.
Regarding EU AI Act you are replying to something I didn't write. Sure it doesn't allow real-time surveillance. I wrote that it does allow surveillance over the recorded materials. This technicality allows passing all video through storage, then monitor suspects via AI programs all without judicial approvals.
And finally EMFA does authorize deployment of the spyware against journalists in cases of investigating a crime carrying 3= years penalty. Do I need to spell out how laughable that is? Practically any national security crime carry similar or heavier penalties and govt. can start a very broad and arbitrary investigation for any reason. This means that the matter of starting surveillance is a small technicality really with zero oversight.
What do you mean no law mandating permanent camera?
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=PI_... https://medium.com/@shahadilh18/your-car-will-soon-watch-you...
ChatControl 2.0 is exactly "all messaging must be intercepted and monitored" ...
Some of it probably is a slippery slope argument however that slippery slope has materialized already in other areas ... And security plays a role here as well. Maybe the camera/software/system is mandated not to identify driver (as is written in ADDS "spec") but atrocious security the modern car has would probably allow for that somehow...
Can I invoke CCPA to get a report of and/or delete my data?
You can invoke CCPA (if applicable) and directly ask a covered business or registered data broker for an exact output of your existing information on their systems. This is honestly rare and most companies will find ways to deny you - asking for various documents to prove your identity and hoping you quit responding.
If you are a CA resident you can also get on the state's DROP platform to request that all registered data brokers delete your data, but it's only for deletion and not the other 4 types of data requests allowed under the CCPA (right to know, right to collect, right to opt out, and right to limit use).
Several years ago, a German company whose name rhymes with "rowdy" sought permission from a Middle Eastern government to collect location and other information (e.g., speed) from its sold automobiles. The government asked them what they wanted to do with the information. They dithered and dawdled and failed to come up with an answer beyond "improved consumer experience." They failed to mention thay planned to sell the collected information to third-parties.
Terms of use to even read the article:
> third-party partners process information about you and how you use our services, including clicks and screen recordings, using first and third-party cookies, pixels, and similar technologies
Any type of data gathering should be forbidden. The "with consent" is bullshit, as the only way to not give consent is to leave society and live in a cave. (No driving a car, no taking a flight, no reading a website, no subscribing to any service, not playing games, etc.) When there is no real choice there is no consent either.
Corporations have profiles on citizens that makes the Gestapo or the KGB seem uninformed in comparison. There is no freedom when the people in power know everything about you.
In my GM car I have the wonderful opportunity to pull the OnStar fuse and disable all cellular connectivity. However, I am concerned the telematics information are stored in long term storage and if I have to reconnect the fuse, all my driving will be batch uploaded. I hope not!! And the GPS still works. Maybe I can find some dummy loads as well or the antennae.
It's still better than other modern cars though? I think.
If you are willing to lose GPS, maybe you could set the car's internal clock to the year 2000. This might fool a cursory data dump that is looking for "last three months of driving habits". Would obviously not stand up to any real scrutiny, but mostly painless.
GPS provides the time, so this probably won't work. If it ever reconnects it will just reset its clock. That's often one of the first things that any computer does after a long period of no power/connection.
I did say lose the GPS.
GP was talking about reconnecting the system. Is GPS separate?
The systems must be separate if they were able to disable some of the network connectivity but maintain GPS.
I thought GP was talking about if they had to reconnect the systems for some reason, would archived telemetry suddenly be uploaded. Which is a real possibility, so I was suggesting poisoning the data. Even if you correct the clock today, the previously recorded timestamps cannot be automatically fixed. Even better would be to reset the clock on every startup event.
Which is all still a band-aid solution - a targeted analysis could mostly correct the time-keeping. This just prevents getting scooped up in a simple drag net kind of search.
I work in grid management, and the Telemetry from EVs is a valuable data stream for steerable demand on the grid, a genuine societal benefit.
The only data we need is if you’re at home and the charging metrics /w commands.
But the amount of unnecessary data that is available, is a real privacy concern.
Apparently Rivians can be prevented from doing this:
Can I disable all data collection from my vehicle?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47967786
I notice that not one comment here, nor the article, notes that this doesn't happen with a Tesla.
No, you just have to worry about random employees watching the video feeds for shits and giggles
theverge doesn't like Tesla and neither do the vast majority of people here. Why provide a fair and balanced view if it helps someone we don't like?
Because HN/nerds like to think of ourselves as objective, open to the truth and data driven results. Then we find out, we're no better than the average, just different topics.
why do you think this? can you provide a written terms or similar to hold this belief? i would think they are absolutely selling all the data
Terms are here:
https://www.tesla.com/legal/privacy
Why doesn’t it happen with them?
Tesla charges a $10/month subscription for its connected features, with relatively high uptake because its software is actually great (unlike the dogshit UX of most cars), so it doesn't need to sell data. Plus it just isn't how Tesla operates.
I wonder how long that will last. That may be their privacy policy today, but AFAIK that's merely a policy, not a binding agreement. I don't know whether anything stops them from changing their mind later, i.e., the classic rug-pull.
I appreciate Tesla's position on the matter, but I'd still rather have the collection and dissemination of the data more tightly regulated by law.
They may not sell the data, they just keep it for themselves. And Elon.
I never thought I would say that, but I would rather have my data hoarded by a crazy rightwinger Elon, than by Stellantis or VW or BMW or Hyundai or any Chinese vendors and being sold to each other plus to a dozens of incompetent or malicious middleman contractors like the one pwned recently in USA. I mean, both alternatives are crap, but 1 piece of crap is slightly better that 100 pieces of crap for the same cost. PS: never owned anything by Elon.
Since when is Tesla software great? Every time I get into a Tesla I have to spend five minutes to pair my iPhone over Bluetooth like it’s 2010. I then have to place my phone on the wireless charging pad and enjoy navigation on the small screen of my phone since it doesn’t support CarPlay. I have to make a playlist of my music before the trip since I can’t control my music safely.
This is not a conspiracy, just normal human behaviour. The loud voices are loud. People are complaining about cars that do collect data. Do you see ANY comments about any manufacturer that doesn’t do this? The only time I’ve ever seen a comment like that was regarding older used cars.
All it can tell us is that maybe this is something tesla should market (if it’s true) rather than bullshit like “self driving”
>rather than bullshit like “self driving”
You should go try it. Do a free test drive with FSD next time you have a free hour. You'll stop using the scare quotes.
I’m not against self driving cars, but if I can’t sit in the back of the car, legally, and read a book while it drives me to work, it’s not self driving is it?
And the DMV (Department of Motor vehicle Services) has also sold registration data. In California, and Texas, they have been fined for this - I'm unsure they aren't completely barred from using a loophole to still do that.
This is why I'm a vocal advocate for having an LLC own any vehicles you might drive. It protects you from the license-plate reading lookup as well from Flock et all. Though I don't know it guarantees you can't be looked up by insurance it's resistance by one more bit of friction. The vehicle I drive now is an old 2012 Lexus owned by Montana LLC and it also has no smart technology and very little insurance costs.
It won't protect you from the insurance agencies; they demand a DL ID# and a VIN. And you are required by law to purchase from them.
And they're stautorily exempted from a whole boatload of privacy laws, like HIPAA.
In California you can post a surety bond in lieu of insurance. I'm sure the same applies in other states with governance that is not captured by corporate interests.
Can you elaborate on this some? Afaik insurance is the only thing they would accept. I think insurance is generally a nasty scam so anything to get away from it would be pretty neat
You have to deposit $75,000 to the DMV and if you get in an accident where you're at fault you will also be on the hook for damages beyond that. You can also get a surety bond for that amount, instead of doing a cash deposit.
It used to be 35k but it was increased in late 2024 (which is good because it hadn't increased since the 70s).
https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/vehicle-registration/insurance...
But to do that you really have to hate insurers or be uninsurable. Because realistically putting that 75k in a basic HISA will yield enough interests to pay for regular car insurance and you get to keep your 75k.
Thats quite a lot more than i expected, i just have never had a good experience with insurance, everything is a long drawn fight. Probably not worth it unless under specific circumstances
They don't ask for license plates. At least through a camera tech like Flock, it isn't super easy to pick up a vin. So thinking this through more, at least having an insurance agency have your vin isn't as bad as having a flock & flock affiliated agency have your license plate - because if flock & flock affiliated dont have your vin they may never have the vin to find you via insurance company.
If you'd like to buy this data, go talk to the guys over at Inrx. They will happily give you a product demo showing point to point trips recorded by connected onstar or whatever corresponding manf connected car service.
Just don’t get a car with connected internet, or smart X in any way, which is most modern cars unfortunately, and if you do, disable the telemetry. I have a clean, cool, low mileage ~15yo car, has no screen or apps, no internet, no back camera or even digital dashboard. I put a screen that has offline CoMaps app, if I ever needed it, and its OBD connected to a local app that does usual diagnostics. Sure, there’s logging I see and it happens, but it’s all local and never shared let alone connect things gas or odometer or driving habits.
> Privacy NoticeWe and our 179 partners store and access personal data.
Fair to say the verge don't really care about data being collected and sold they just want the clicks
My car is from 2017, so thankfully it's not.
My car is much older and I used to hope it would last forever. But now I hope it dies soon enough that when I go to replace it, the options for non smart cars haven't gone away.
They aren't going to go away. You can still buy cars that are 50 years old.
Not really. A 50 year old is a collectable, in high demand.
Like I've said here before: we need to push for legislation that bans the sale of consumer data collected by websites and manufacturers to third-parties.
We need a solution, not a Band-Aid like the "Freedom Car Act." I believe that legislators are deliberately coming up with legislation that mildly hinders, but in no way resolves the issue in order to keep their sugar-daddies freewheeling.
Politics should put it on the agenda. It would influence my vote
Benefit of being relatively poor. I've never been in a financial position to buy a car with all those fancy features.
Another reason to use a car from 90's or 2000's.. Also they wont burn oil like a modern car + more durable and repairable metal parts.
https://youtu.be/Ft12aZffCEg?si=qP1J5k6RXAxmZChf
https://youtu.be/SeMZGICNSMg?si=-YLnt5Q477xpFbra
https://youtu.be/8Kp108x4tQA?si=j7JV-_Dpl5afP99F
>Another reason to use a car from 90's or 2000's
Talking as an eastern european: unless you live in a sunshine place (~Mediterranean) most of the 90s car already eaten by the rust + the salt used for defrosting on roads in the winter.
Also by my experience cars (except from SUVs) somehow never kept up with the road quality. Pot holes are a problem everywhere but you can see that certain brands for example japanese and korean ones never designed for deteriorating road quality (and I don't mean offroad) because... you know they just don't exist in the home market. So the tires, wheels, suspension are not as robust as they should be.
Sure _everything can be fixed_ but then your car becomes a hobby and might not everyone has an attitude and time for that.
> Talking as an eastern european: unless you live in a sunshine place (~Mediterranean) most of the 90s car already eaten by the rust + the salt used for defrosting on roads in the winter.
You can still find good examples in the UK where we have salted roads. I've paid for mine to be dinitroled. Pot holes etc are a problem here and they will affect newer vehicles too and used to go through a tyre a winter.
My wife's Ioniq 5 was hit on the bumper while it was parked. Took weeks for all parts to get to the dealer and cost thousands of dollars because sensors etc. if someone hit my 1981 Volvo 240 the same way I'm not even sure it would cause any noticable damage.
The 240 is built like a brick (both in terms of strength and looks). My dad had one when I was much younger, then he sold it for a 740. A few months after the sales, police knocked on his door and asked him a lot of questions. It turned out the purchaser had used the car in a ram-raid on a shop.
Oh yeah I believe it. This thing is super strong.
Today’s cars are safer because of the crumple zones. We romanticize the older cars but their rigidity also caused impact force to be absorbed by occupants.
You're right that today's cars are safer, but the Volvo 240 does have crumple zones. It was considered the safest car of its time actually
Someone forgot to set the brake in their car, rolled into the back of my dads 70ish pickup. It rolled the width of a parking row, on fairly flat surface. The car had no chance obviously, but it was pretty funny seeing the damage; bumper and fender, not just a minor one you could slap out with a good fist slam either. There was zero damage to the truck
I really wanted a modern car because of the fancy automation stuff, I thought.
But it never is economical or more environmental friendly.
Whatever I saved on my old car compared to a newer one will never be less than the theoretical fuel savings on a newer car. Repair costs will never be as much (assuming you buy a popular repair friendly car). And nothing new needs to be built for me either.
I am driving a vehicle from the 90s. Works very well. Old British Vehicle so it leaks out oil everywhere but any vehicle that is more the 20 years old will be leaking oil. Have significantly less problems than the car I sold (which was 20 years newer).
How to stop this on Subaru ?
How is this not stealing?
I'm going to pirate shit until this is fixed.
You’re going to steal in response to stealing…?
Unless you’re of the opinion that since it’s data, it’s not stealing?
Maybe the poster is saying, "There are no consequences for anyone acting in this way here, and we seem to be slipping ever more into societal moral decay, so why shouldn't I cheat to win?"
Or: "All companies are essentially gigantic conglomerates eating each others' food by selling my own and others' data to each other, so I basically have rights to their claimed assets anyway."
Or: "No company or government respects my privacy or property rights, so why should I respect theirs?"
Some of that is a form of "I am going to steal, because others are stealing", and well, if stealing becomes the norm, yeah, I would say the comment has some validity in a few words for the common citizen.
No, this is mostly out of activism. I'm angry that the law is there for one group while the rights of another group are completely neglected. That it gives me free content is just a nice side-effect, nothing more.
This is sad.
I drive a restored 2002 Citroen C5.
I have a 2005 Toyota and 69 Beetle ...
Fuck you, data leeches ... you'll get nothing from me.
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1. Android Automotive is run by Google, so that entire argument goes out the window immediately, because Google
2. Car companies bypass CarPlay/Android Auto with their own head units with software that executes before the projection software does.
Android Auto and Android Automotive are not the same thing.
Sorry, but a lot of cars, even if they run Android Automotive, maintain a separate TCU/DCM with its own cellular connection that can collect vehicle information independently of Android Automotive.