From your weight and facial expressions to your destination, cars collect a startling amount of data about you. Some of it may even raise your insurance costs.
Mine isn’t. I got a 2023 bolt and immediately upon taking possession, pulled the fuse that runs that shit. I could go behind the screen and remove the onstar module entirely, and I probably will to restore the nav and location-based charging at some point, but not a priority. Pulling the fuse didn’t disable anything I can’t live without, since my old car didn’t even have the stuff that gets disabled.
I don’t use apps on my phone that connect to the car, and haven’t even synced my phone for calls. I have an old android I factory reset and created a local account on, which doesn’t have a sim card, just hotspot from my active phone, and I use that for the EV charge location apps, totally isolated from anything else because they, too, syphon data.
I’d personally never buy a vehicle that couldn’t have all that shit disabled. It may still collect it, but if I cant intercept or prevent transmission of it, I wouldn’t buy the vehicle.
I’m hoping that by the time I need to replace this one, we have at least started to invest in decent public transit that doesn’t take 3-10x as long as driving. It could happen. Else I’ll just never leave home because I won’t buy one.
Repair shops upload stored data automatically when they have to purchase a software license to do work on your car.
Do you have a citation for that? With how shit search has become I’m struggling to find anything about it. All i get are right-to-repair articles and stuff about data access being a problem for repair shops (I assume thats in the same vein)
Wonder how that works when I haven’t consented to any data disclosures, even implicitly. I didn’t set up any of those things, because I pulled the fuse, and no consent screens ever came up. None of the paperwork signed was for it, either, best I could tell.
If you bought a Nissan, you’ve given them the right to collect data about your sexual orientation and history. It’s in their privacy policy.
thafuq.
I’m unreasonably infuriated by this title format.
My car isn’t spying on me. It doesn’t have any kind of wireless connectivity whatsoever.
My car barely even has a computer
So like, what car do you buy new if you want to mod it to not phone home?
The one you downloaded in the 90s.
No can can transmit data without an antenna. I disconnect mine when I get a new car and just don’t install their app on my phone.
Some cars have a “telemetry” fuse, but I’ve never trusted that. They don’t explicitly say which part of the car does the spying and the reporting.
What antenna? The FM am antenna? There are probably multiple others hidden that are tiny (think mobile phones) if they want to so it without Our knowledge.
Chevrolet Express
Love me some good Beeb coverage, this is great
