cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/tech/p/1432229/your-car-is-a-smartphone-on-wheels-a-team-of-researchers-tested-21-vehicles-and-found-th
Data sent by vehicles and companion apps included locations, VINs, and other identifiers. Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft were among the top receivers of driver data.
We just bought a new car this year (Kia) and I completely confused the sales lady when I told her we were not going to use the “connect app” or activate connect on the car itself. She was like “lets get you setup in connect” and I was “no thanks”
We have a nice 🚫 symbol with a radio tree behind it, so I 100% know the car is still connected to the cell network but it is not registered/connected to us, and no app installed.
Sure, we lose some functionality (remote start, and access to in-car wifi) but all of that is paid subscriptions. Sure they first x months are ‘free’ but after you gotta pony up $ to continue.
Note: I’m under no illusion tracking is just not happening for us now… I just want to make it harder where I can.
My wife just got a newer car last week so I’m asking you because you know more than I.
We never connected a phone to it but the GPS worked right off the bat. Do cars have standalone GPS now? As long as we don’t connect a phone, it can’t reach the internet, right?
Cars have had standalone GNSS (GPS) for quite a while. GNSS itself doesn’t require internet. Its output is coordinates and elevation - it’s the “gotta have internet to load the map in which I’ll show you the coordinates” that makes people associate GNSS with internet. Offline maps solve this.
Unless it has local maps like mine that are now a decade out of date. It’s completely useless now but i refuse to pay several 100 for the update.
If it’s a decade out of date, it may be old enough that the maps live on a DVD or SD card, in which case you might be able to get updated maps for free. Yarr!
Ya a lot will have gps built in but as others have said, the map will be static (whatever version was put in when built). Unless you have it updated by connecting it or buying an updated USB or whatever is required for your car
So ya it’s likely yours has both a gps antenna and navigation built in.
It must have a sim card somewhere right? How else is it phoning home?
Maybe start with removing the fuse for the modem to make sure nothing essential breaks?
Worth a shot. The question is whether the modem has its own fuse and isn’t integrated into the head unit
It is of course different for different brands, models and model year but my car seems to have a fuse for the Internet connection.
Control module for online car; Control module for Volvo On Call
I’m getting tempted to pull it and see what happens more than the fault code.
Oh ya for sure it has a sim.
If it were my daily driver I’d dig in, find the antenna and shunt it to ground so it could not communicate
My wife is already not fully onboard with my need for privacy from these companies so I won regarding not activating the car but not sure she’d let me start pulling panels to find and kill the antenna.
I hate my 2013 Mazda but also love it. Stupid and full of bad memories
And if I were to use a screwdriver to pop a component off of the motherboard, which website would tell me the component to target for my make/model?
Researchers connected each vehicle to a custom WiFi access point and logged all outgoing traffic.
The article talks about both apps and the vehicles themselves. I would really like to see more info on what the cars do when you take the apps out of the equation. Are there any that don’t phone home unless you explicitly give them internet access?
A study about the results will be published this week.
I look forward to reading this.
Edit: actually there’s quite a bit more detailed info at https://automatictransmission.khoury.northeastern.edu/
I’m still not sure if those require giving the car a WiFi/cellular connection or if it’ll just use it’s own… I’ve heard that cars use their own SIMs to phone home, but I don’t actually know how prevalent that is
I know for a fact Ford ships a modem with a SIM and they use it sparingly because it’s expensive. Don’t know abt the rest.
That graphic is less than useless without any source to back it up though…for all we know this could be AI garbage you just generated.
It’s in the article that they were responding to. So you are just wildely throwing out negativity without any comprehension.
No it’s not, that’s a different graph although it has similar data.
Would REALLY love to de-surveillance my vehicle if anybody has any tips (please quietly make the “buy an old car instead” jokes to yourself)
Find and disconnect the telemetry antenna. If the telemetry is in a discrete unit delete that too.
Don’t do anything irreversible in case the manufacturer has booby trapped the car to go in to limp mode without the portable flock setup.
Okay, but how do they fill the giant hole in the middle of the dash now?
(/srs can just cut off all antennas but this will make the computer waste battery trying to connect so the car may not start after a while if it’s combustion engine)
That’s the interface to you not the one to the cell, in case anyone doesn’t know.
In many cars, the modem that phones home with your data may be a separate unit. Depending on your make and model, you can sometimes buy cable adapters that will connect power to everything except that subsystem. The term to search for is a “DCM bypass plug”.
Many cars have the modem / LTE as a module that can be disabled. On my car, a 2018 Chevy, the LTE antenna plugs into a networking module in the footwell. I bought an antenna cable and dummy load resistor on Amazon for ~$10 and simply unplugged the LTE antenna in the car and plugged in the dummy antenna. That disables all cell network connectivity but doesn’t effect things like Bluetooth. It’s also easily reversible if someone wanted to do that for some reason.
You can probably Google something like “year make model disable LTE” or “disable telemetry” to get an idea of how hard it would be on your car. Some make it very cheap / easy and some make it very difficult.
(please quietly make the “buy an old car instead” jokes to yourself)
That’s not a joke, it’s sincere advice. My newest car is a 2008 (I think) model. I’d love to have an EV, but I don’t because I haven’t figured out how to have one that isn’t infected by “telemetry” and other enshittification. I have hopes for the Slate Truck, but it doesn’t actually exist yet, so I wait.
(Also, yes, as a mod of the place I’d be remiss if I didn’t second the other reply and suggest adopting a non-car-dependent lifestyle to begin with.)
I hate this style of titles. I’m a gearhead and own 5 vehicles and a motorcycle. None of them are a smartphone on wheels, the newest one is newly 20 years old.
I’m driving my crv until the wheels fall off and then I’m gluing them back on
my '08 (that a bought a '12 to replace) is a rusty pos that needs a lot of high-mileage maintenance and regular maintenance (rusty af everything, gas tank is gonna start leaking soon, pretty much the entire suspension is shot, power steering starting to leak, some sort of engine issues that I’m not sure what exactly is causing it, rusty exhaust headers causing some of the engine issues), but since I can’t get any money for it, I’m not sure when exactly I’m going to get rid of it. might as well keep it around until I know for sure I don’t want to fix it
Similar findings as:
and https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/12/cars-and-drivers-2024-year-review
Petition: https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/campaigns/car-companies/
2006 car with manual transmission. There’s exactly enough computer in it to run the ignition and oil change timer.
The one time I’m happy that Toyota was so far behind the competition - I’ve a 2020 Prius and its infotainment looks a decade out of date but that means it’s very offline.
Would rather drive a rust bucket. I do drive a rust bucket. I’m not affraid of scratching it. I don’t feel I have to always keep it pristine clean. I’m not affraid of working on it myself. I’m not being charged robbed subscriptions for equipment already installed. I’m not wondering wether I’m being tracked by sick fucking creeps.
I just need to get from point a to point b. I don’t need some goddamn home entertainment system connected to everything else.
I also don’t want it, which is arguably the more important point as the customer
I have a 2008 car, it doesn’t even chime when I don’t put my seatbelt on.
After driving a 2024 Subaru, I realize that I am a very fortunate person, and I live a life of silence and peaceful reflection.
2010 models at the latest, I am only going to own old vehicles until this beeping madness ends.
How long until new models show advertisements on the dash related to your conversations? Three years, tops.
I have a 2011 Honda Civic, and it has just enough tech to allow Bluetooth calling. Everything else is old fashioned. I’ll have the engine completely rebuilt before I buy one of these bullshit new cars.
Good thing is you can permanently disable most of the safety beeps on Subarus. I did on mine.
I hope the study specifically publishes the data on the Model 3. I bought one before I became much more privacy conscious, but I’ve done my best to mitigate the leakage from that. In doing so, I read through all of Tesla’s terms and conditions upon opt out and sending any of my information or information that can be used to identify or profile me, should never be sold to advertisers. I write software licenses for a living so I’m pretty confident in my reading on this. It would be interesting to see what can currently be mitigated by changing some settings and what cannot.
