I wanted to get others’ takes but it seems like the only real way to get a non-spying car is to get an older car without any sort of telemetrics. I saw a video about different car companies’ security policies, well specifically the new Mental Outlaw video, and it just blew me away how even our cars aren’t safe. Anyone got tips for how to anonymize their car?
DIY ?
Now just hope the batteries don’t have a radio.
Let me try this comment again.
There is no driving with privacy or anonymity unless you’re on private land.
Anyone got tips for how to anonymize their car?
Remove the license plate. You will rarely have privacy driving a car on a public road. You should disable the modem, of course, but you’re still not going to be driving anonymously or privately. Automated license plate readers means your travels are going into databases that very well could be breached at some point in time.
Law enforcement use of ALPRs is rapidly expanding, with tens of thousands of readers in use throughout the United States; one survey indicates that in 2016 and 2017 alone, 173 law enforcement agencies collectively scanned 2.5 billion license plates.
According to the latest available numbers from the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, 93 percent of police departments in cities with populations of 1 million or more use their own ALPR systems, some of which can scan nearly 2,000 license plates per minute. In cities with populations of 100,000 or more, 75 percent of police departments use ALPR systems.
Despite this expansive data collection effort, many departments have not developed a policy to govern the use of ALPR technology, or provided privacy protections.
The fact that your data is exposed to someone doesn’t mean that you have to give up and just let everyone else have it as well.
That’s not the point I’m making. You should disable your cars modem if it has one, but you still should have no expectation of privacy. Thinking you can have anonymity with a license plate displayed to everyone is foolish. It’s like asking how to be anonymous while wearing a name tag and the same clothes every day.
Yea, that part is true.
I don’t entirely agree with this: I know there are no ANPR cameras within my town for example. There’s a speed camera that only takes photos if you’re speeding, but ANPR cameras are limited to motorways and trunk roads, I can move around my town and the surrounding ones without clocking ANPR. Of course I’m still on regular CCTV and cell towers triangulate my phone, but that requires authorities actively looking into me which I doubt they are.
I tend to use an eBike where possible but again the phone triangulates if I have it on me, and it wouldn’t be too hard to follow on cctv if you really wanted to. Everyone and their mother has a doorbell camera now
Adding to this, automatic plate flippers exist and are pretty popular for show cars to display something else when parked. Typically wired to ignition so it shows your plate only when the cars running.
Issue is if you street park dependent on the state, if the vehicle registration is hidden by the plate being flipped they can likely tow it. Would work great for at work/in your driveway though. Could maybe just have a bypass switch for if you need to park somewhere and display the plate.
Still a pain in the ass that it’s this bad though.
Theyre also recording the make model car type car size etc so you’re still not immune from fingerprinting
Old and serviceable. Don’t give me plastic
Remove the cellular modem.
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I’d want bluetooth for music from my phone though. And it’d be nice if my phone’s cellular and GPS didn’t get blocked.
Isn’t your phone far more connected to your identity than your car? As in, if your worried about Toyota or Ford tracking your vehicles driving statistics it seems using GPS and wifi and Bluetooth on your phone that also has all your payment info, browsing history, and all your passwords saved defeats the entire purpose of worrying about your car. However, at least your phone gives you a benefit to using it like navigation and music, your car just mines your location data.
Privacy is not just black and white.
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That’s impractical. Bluetooth and Wi-Fi also needs modems so just remove those too.
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They’re going to be in the same location for a given model year, which somebody will likely have documented online.
Most of the cars will still try to connect to open Wifi when available to upload data.
Very nice ! That’s when you can start spying on your car’s behavior.
Not really. If they use TLS / HTTPS then you won’t see a damn thing.
Yeah. Believe me most of these embedded controllers are not very well programmed. Play a bit with fake certificates and I won’t be astonished if you to catch something.
Perhaps disconnecting the RF antenna, and replacing it with an appropriate termination?
What are the chances the software is designed to throw errors and “See a technician” messages if you dk?
Not small, but I think you’ll have better chances with the mid level commuter cars. You’ll probably get some error messages on some of them, but if you can ignore them, they wouldn’t stop the car from running.It’s the high end ones and EVs that have a higher chance of bricking if you disable the antenna.
We need an iFixit-like database giving each car a score about how easy it is to unplug the telematics units and what errors it may result in, complete with a score.
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I’ve heard it can cause problems in some models, so people need to do their research. With my truck it’s dead easy and are no drawbacks.
My suggestion, if you’re looking for a new car, is to research where the modem in the car is, and unplug it during the test drive (assuming it’s reachable).
I unplugged the one in my work truck, 2023 Ford F150. They call it the “Telematics unit” and it’s on the rear cab wall on the right side, hidden behind the sound deadening foam. I did this after it was bought, but if I had known about it before my boss paid it, I definately would have tried it before the test drive to make sure, and I plan to do it if/when I look for a newer car!
I unplugged every cable coming into it - power, antennas, data, all of them! The only issue that comes up is the center screen on the dash crashes back to the main menu when you try to open the data/wifi settings.
No other issues so far after almost 5k miles! No warnings, no lights on the dash, nothing! Android auto/carplay even still works! Don’t know yet if the dealer will try to plug the unit back in during the next service, but I intend to raise hell if they try!
Get rid of the car
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I don’t recall what kind of car it was, but there was one that saved the phone number associated with any phone that connected via Bluetooth.
While I don’t think it’s likely as a way to trick people to connecting to get their phone number, it was a rental car which opened them up to impersonation scams. Knowing they just rented from the company and where in the city provides quite a bit of information on you.
Android has the ability to deny this information. If iOS has one it does jack shit because Apple doesn’t care about your privacy.
I am a private person. Not because I have something to hide, I just don’t like the idea that my data is being sold which exposes me to various scams. I got to the point where some of my online purchases are marked as fraud due to measures I took - vpn, email alias, delivery to a parcel locker, spoofed phone number, one time cc. But with cars I cannot help myself. I truly enjoy all the “smart” features. Collision detection, ability to press SOS button when I need help, ability to remotely start/stop/lock/unlock/turn on/off ac/etc. I know how privacy invasive those things are but in this case I’ve chosen convince over privacy.
I’ve got a 2009 dumb car and I am babying it because I dread having to try to buy a new to me car that isn’t full of telemetrics and other modern car garbage.
Learn how to work on it
I already do. I’m no mechanic, but I’ve made numerous repairs over the years and am familiar with and can do basic car maintenance.
Do you do any rust proofing? Keeping the rust away is key if you want to keep it for a long time. My car is ten years old and practically rust free, been applying Fluid Film every other year.
Depending on the car you might be able to physically disable telemetry. Here are some thoughts/ideas I’ve been collecting:
- Hit “SOS” button and opt-out of all services through customer service. This of course requires trusting the company to actually do it.
- It’s possible that the info could be stored locally and then uploaded when it gets serviced though
- Remove the fuse to the modem/data communication module (DCM)
- Disconnect wiring to the LTE antennas
- A number of people have mentioned that they can get the dealer to disconnect the telemetry as a precondition to buying. For instance, here.
- Jump the data communication module (DCM) cable with a ~$70 dongle to bypass just the telematics components
- Disconnect the DCM cable, which will likely gimp the infotainment if not other systems, or remove the entire DCM unit
Quite a few cars also still have a SIM card hidden somewhere, which can be removed. The location of it varies widely though and they’re usually pretty hard to find.
You need a line break between your paragraph and your list.
Depending on the car you might be able to physically disable telemetry. Here are some thoughts/ideas I’ve been collecting:
- Hit “SOS” button and opt-out of all services through customer service. This of course requires trusting the company to actually do it.
- It’s possible that the info could be stored locally and then uploaded when it gets serviced though
- Remove the fuse to the modem/data communication module (DCM)
- Disconnect wiring to the LTE antennas
- A number of people have mentioned that they can get the dealer to disconnect the telemetry as a precondition to buying. For instance, here.
- Jump the data communication module (DCM) cable with a ~$70 dongle to bypass just the telematics components
- Disconnect the DCM cable, which will likely gimp the infotainment if not other systems, or remove the entire DCM unit
Oh, it looked Ok in my app (Voyager). But I added the line break.
- Hit “SOS” button and opt-out of all services through customer service. This of course requires trusting the company to actually do it.
- Hit “SOS” button and opt-out of all services through customer service. This of course requires trusting the company to actually do it.
Are there any write-ups on the situation in Europe under GDPR-legislation? Mostly I read about the US-situation which seems like the wild west, but I can’t imagine that it is perfectly fine in the EU either even if you opt-out of using their apps etc.
Mozilla Foundation did a deep dive into this. And the results where abysmal. The only brands not completely horrifying where Renault/Dacia because they are European and only serve the European market so they have to follow GDPR.
Nice to know
Wait, Renault doesn’t ship anything outside the EU?
They used to but stopped AFAIK. I am not completely sure but that’s what I read when the Mozilla Foundation report came out. The other reply said to India so maybe my information is not completely accurate…
It does, to India.
Cars are fascist, don’t drive one
Should be quite easy to remove any WiFi/cellular/satellite antennas from the car’s computer. (Might be trace/chip antennas, so make sure to get those). If you’re extra paranoid, get the GPS antenna too, so it can’t simply record data indefinitely.
Might take a few hours to go through the car to make sure you get everything, but you won’t be limited to super old cars.
I don’t believe for a second that the car won’t be sending either an unremovable error message, a constant and un-mute-able audible alarm, or a complete lockout of subsystems or the entire system itself. The best case scenario is that this is a mild inconvenience.
Does your car lock up outside of cell coverage? I’m not suggesting removing the radios themselves, just the antennas. To the car, it will just always be out of range.
The antenna used for talking to the keys might cause trouble, but those are either inherently short range inductive systems or are receivable using a 20$ RTL SDR to verify it’s not sending anything else.
ITT people are all dismissive because you can’t actually be anonymous on the road (license plates, speed cameras…), but, honestly, I just want a car that doesn’t listen in on my conversations, sell my data to brokers, require any passanger to accept the privacy policy, or record the times I have sex (jk it won’t be able to if I don’t have any)
I don’t have any tips, but I wish I did. My car’s just over a year old and I don’t even like driving it since I found out it’s spying on me all the time. The ‘infotainment’ system is also integrated with everything in the vehicle so turning it off isn’t an option. I really like the car, but I feel like privacy is something that shouldn’t have to be a consideration when buying a vehicle. I’m just about positive there’s not a new vehicle available in the US market without one of these things in it unless you’re buying fleet vehicles.
Sell it and get a old pickup truck. Those things go forever
