No, I am saying if you disable or tweak the sensors that feed the onboard telemetry system on a modern car which include sensors for the accelerator pedal position, vehicle speed, individual wheel speed sensors (for abs, traction control, and stability control), the car will probably freak out and enter limp mode.

If you screw with the stability or traction sensors, they can cause the airbags to not trigger properly or predictably. Remember, there are basic impact sensors for airbags but there are also angle sensors and accelerometers for rollover detection now. If you disable any of that, the car will not work properly.

I agree 100%.

Yeah that isn’t an option unless you want the dash to light up like a Christmas tree, your abs not to work, the stability/traction control to freak out and disable your accellerator, or cause an airbag fault, or cause the seatbelt pretensioners to fault.

You should double check that. There are lots of non-insurance apps that share data through data brokers where it gets back to insurers. You personally may not use them, but some people will/do.

I want to re-re-re-iterate that I am not advocating giving up on the idea of securing your car, I am just saying if you are going through the exercise of making sure your car is secure or offline that you also need to be realistic about what your phone shares even when locked down.

Its not the sensors that store the data, the ecu/pcm/bcm do that. Yes, there is essentially a black box function in most modern-ish cars that logs the last X minutes of driving. It likely also has an “event recorder” for when certain conditions are triggered.

I know for a fact that most have reflash counters or log when the ecu was written to last. That is more to do with tuning or warranty stuff but still.

I’m not doing anything, you are inferring what I meant without asking… Again, all I am saying is that the car is one vector for tracking both via location and activity and you should not ignore one and think that you are not being tracked.

If you think your wireless cell phone that constantly is in sync with cell phone radio towers around you does not allow your location to be known or calculated, I have some bad news for you.

Again, I am not saying I am giving up on anything. I mention that because the action of securing your car without being realistic about what your phone is doing while in your car or in your pocket is an half baked exercise.

I’m not arguing you shouldn’t try and be secure. If you are going to the effort to secure your car, you should also make sure your other devices are secure because these sources share much of the same data.

The article is from 2023, it is likely several orders of magnitude worse now.

Imo, the sweet spot for reliability and unconnected tech is the mid 2000s to 2015ish. Good engine control, simple user interfaces with buttons, nice creature comforts, good fuel efficiency, and still good safety (generally)

I have a 2019 wrx that while I like it, I know the subaru telemetry is both significant and easy to access, there has been a number of articles about it published in the last year or two. There are opt out procedures through subaru but let’s not kid ourselves here do you really trust them to do it? How do you prove they have stopped?

That said, your phone shares all that data already, it being shared by another device is not really much different than coming from one source.

(Edit: since some of you missed what I was trying to convey here, I was trying to point out that the exercise of securing your car is half the battle, yes you SHOULD do that, any reduction in data sharing is a positive thing. You should also be realistic about how much that actually accomplishes when you are also carrying your cell phone with you in your car.)

What I really don’t like is the driver aids. My mom has a newer Mercedes suv and it is realllllllly intrusive. The auto brake function as awful, it auto does corrective steering. I am sure in an actual panic situation I would welcome it but I absolutely do not like it on normal situations. I also don’t trust it from a cyber security situation.