I think car privacy isn’t talked about amongst any privacy enthusiasts online ever, and it apparently is one of the biggest data collectors out there. For someone like me who values electric cars for there affordability and environmental reasons, but still want physical car buttons and control over my data, how would I go about this?
Volkswagen (VW) had a massive scandal that showed how dangerous this is. By leaking driving behaviour, VW leaked hidden military bases, politicians likely visiting prostitutes and more. Lucky for them ethical hackers (CCC) found that and did not use the data.
Consumer reports recently added a privacy rating to their car ratings. I glanced at it a little last year. I think it rated if you could opt out and the reach of the sharing.
I do have to say that I’m generally disappointed with the discussion on this topic every tine it comes up. The majority of responses go contrast to the question. “Don’t buy a car” or “fix up a junker” are generally not helpful if you’ve already decided that your top priority is to have a newer car. Another thread actually recommended to move to another country where you could walk everywhere. Seriously.
Most often a car purchase is a complex decision making process where you need to weigh multiple, often conflicting priorities where privacy is only one aspect. I get the impression that if people followed the advice of the majority of these comments, they’d be living in a tent off grid, hunting for food to stay alive, but living their privacy dream.
I don’t think you have to “fix up a junker.” You can find older vehicles that are modern enough to incorporate OBD2 (which helps troubleshooting and maintaining) but modern enough not to be connected to surveillance programs; late 90s into early 2000s maybe even 2010s. You can find them that have been basically maintained.
You’ll sacrifice things like warranties and included maintenance plans, but you’ll be hard pressed to find a mechanic that won’t work on it, parts will be plentiful and cheaper because I feel like lots of things were less bespoke to each manufacturer around that time frame. Plus they didn’t have a computer connected to every little thing. And theres junkyards for big parts.If you have your own tools (or a friend with them) there will be a cheap shop manual you can get (like Haynes) and/or a plethora of youtube videos on how to fix and maintain it.
The price of ownership might be higher but the cost of entry will be significantly less. Not that everyone can or is willing to do the above but there is a middle ground that doesn’t involve junkers.
Ah, yes, here come the “just use your old car because EVs are worse for the environment than the Exxon Valdez or something” posts
That is a myth thoroughly debunked by just a little bit of research and data collection into the making and driving of EVs, as that assumption ran off an old study that used guesstimated worst-case scenario numbers and don’t really reflect what the actual numbers are.
If you want to avoid being tracked, you will have to disconnect the data modem somehow - it is part of your radio antenna. If it gets no power, it gets no connection. Either disconnect from the telematics unit, or at the antenna. Also, you can disconnect your telematics unit itself - the “black box” that lives under the dash and records your driving. Some aftermarket makers have “dummy plug” connectors which will trick the car into thinking it is connected. These are often used with aftermarket head units.
Beware that some cars are tracked by your financial lender, and they don’t like it when this happens. Some other cars actually have to be cloud connected once in a while or they stop working - which is the worst thing modern cars can do.
Prove it’s a myth. I find it really hard to believe me going and purchasing a new car is better then using an already existing car. Manufacturing has a big cost for cars.
Rough math involved: production of a new EV results in between 8-15 tonnes of CO2 emissions, depending on the size of the batteries and vehicle trim.
But let’s aim for somewhere in the middle and take ~12 tonnes as a yardstick.
~12 tonnes of CO2 emissions equates to roughly 1,350 gallons of fuel.
Depending of fuel efficiency, this would equate to between 20k~45k miles.
Feel free to double-check my math in case I did anything wrong, but it does validate that most of these „facts” around EVs are likely FUD spread by fossil fuel aligned sources.
ETA: initially forgot to include CO2 emissions from electricity generation - but this varies wildly based on source (nuclear, hydro & renewables at 0 etc.)
By “tonnes”, do you mean 2,000lb or 1,000kg? In an engineering context, “ton” is the former and “tonne” is the latter.
“Tonne” is also synonymous with “long ton” (dur to converting to 2204.6lb), as well as “metric ton”.
Metric tonnes, as that seems to be the generally used format when discussing CO2 emissions.
Which I know may be confusing, given that I quote imperial values in the rest of the stats - but it was just quick/dirty math and I figured that EV disinformation is highest in the US, so I tried to tailor the values for them.
Please use metric for anything scientific
It was rough, back of the napkin math - primarily intended for those in places where EV disinformation is highest (the US).
Those of us that primarily use metric are more than capable of roughly converting in our heads as required! 😅
Especially wrt. modern gas-fuelled cars for the typical driver as EV prices are artificially jacked up in many Western countries.
Just to point out that you made the initial argument and commented a view without evidence. Now you ask someone who disagrees to give evidence?
Cars are the problem. I am agnostic to whether the car is powered by steam, diesel, gasoline, or electricity. Tail-pipe emissions are a very small part of the overall pollution from a car.
I as a person wouldn’t even blame myself for buying an ICE car because I blame corporations for global warming etc. But I just want an EV because it’s cheaper to run, is more environmentally friendly, I can plug in to a wall socket at home, charge with solar panels etc.
OP didn’t ask about EVs, they asked about modern cars.
Well, actually… Read the post again ;)
Good starting point would be looking up forum or blog posts from people who have disconnected the modem/TCU on a particular EV model. No self-interested auto manufacturer (all of them) would intentionally provide an option in the user interface to take the telemetry system offline. Take note of any side-effects they report, if it needs to be reconnected for inspections, and if there’s any gotchas between software and hardware revisions.
Insist on one that doesn’t have all that crap in it
There’s always a trade-off in some way, though. For instance, Toyota is one of the best in regards to keeping physical controls. But they’re basically the worst offender in regards to data privacy. “Insist” is fine on paper, but (unless you’re a millionaire who can afford a custom-built car) you’re inevitably going to have to purchase one on the existing market. And the existing market is all about digital controls and privacy violations.
Saying “just don’t get one that has those things” is a little like saying “just don’t get a house that catches on fire” after a wildfire rips through an area. It’s not exactly up to the customer, and the average person could never hope to afford the custom work that those kinds of requirements would entail.
You’re fucked. Best you can do is ride a bike when possible, and keep driving old cars from the mid-2000s or earlier when necessary.
Lotta early 2010s models are also telemetry free but have newer safety systems and probably less miles on them.
Gladly, it will be years before I can afford a car that doesn’t respect my privacy.
I’m actually prototyping some designs for making open source vehicles/transportation. The only way this stops is more people advocating for more privacy laws, & for more open source transportation/vehicles becoming a thing worldwide
Just like it is for laptops/phones and Social Media via Linux, FOSS, & Open Source
how can I improve my privacy when buying a modern car?
Buy a train ticket with cash? Not guaranteed to be fully “private” in the cyberpunk shithole we live in but presumably more private than a car.
On that note, fuck every transit agency (including TransLink in Vancouver) who make it more expensive to buy tickets with cash compared to a transit card. And especially fuck you if your transit card system is a P3 with the data handled by a private company (again, including TransLink). You’re probably paying the money they thought they could have made selling your commute data to advertisers.
Bonus non privacy related rant: TransLink, the Earth and our decedents also say fuck you for using plastic RFID cards even for single journey tickets that will get promptly thrown in the trash when they expire in 90 minutes instead of a simple piece of paper that can biodegrade. They even waste more resources to wrap the plastic in paper to give the illusion of the ticket being made of paper when it absolutely is not. Yeah make single use microcomputers and antennas why don’t you? Can’t have transit being too eco friendly after all. They’re not futuristic, future generations will curse us for being so barbarically wasteful of precious resources while digging those RFID tickets out of landfills to extract silicon and metal from. Just print QR codes on normal paper tickets for god sake since the RFID cards probably only store a single unique ID that needs to be looked up against a database anyway, or better yet, just have coin slots on the fare gates and skip giving you a ticket altogether. Oh wait, but then they wouldn’t able to know which station you get off at and refuse to let you out until you’ve paid the upcharge for having the audacity to ride a fully automated train system even one station outside your home city.
Train stations have hella cameras
So do roads, and your metal cage literally has a code on a plaque tied directly to your government ID, with a retroreflective background and each character carefully engineered to be machine readable from any angle and lighting. Hell, a good number of the cars you pass have 360 degree camera arrays pointed directly in your windows, or if you spring for a higher end model with all the features, you get the privilege of a camera pointed straight at your face and at your passengers’ faces.
Also, you can cover your face on transit with something like a medical mask and sunglasses. If you try covering your license plate you’ll literally get arrested.
As scary & intrusive as all of that sounds, I’m still only worried they’ll spy me picking my nose while driving.
I mean, compared to what? Picking your nose on transit? The people sitting across from you is probably a bigger source of “spying” (and judgment) than the cameras in that case. IMO if you’re okay with being spied on in your car you really don’t have much more to worry about on a train or in a station.
I further submit that cars, being your personal space but still very much “in public,” give you much more of an illusion of privacy while in most cases being just as if not more invasive than transit.
Also, if we’re talking only the transit or road system and not the spying at your destination, driving gives much more precise location data than transit. They’ll know which exact house or building you pulled up to compared to which train station or bus stop you get off at. And if you do consider all surveillance, then they can figure out where you’re going even if you walk because there will be cameras at your destination.
I guess I’m just enjoying this 2018 Mercedes I bought new off the lot in cash that was the last of its kind to have no big brother tech in it.
Just don’t connect it to the internet. The radio and Bluetooth do not need an internet connection to work and you can use your phone for maps and music streaming.
Pretty sure many of the cars sold now have a SIM card or something similar which the manufacturer pays for up front. I don’t think it takes much for them to ping periodically with the information they’d like to track and this ensures they get the data.
Still, don’t connect your car to the Internet, as that could give them way more data but I doubt that that doing that alone will completely stop the tracking.
Edit: typo
In modern cars you’d need to actually rip the dashboard apart and cut the power to the built-in eSIM cellular antenna. Cars these days use cell towers to phone home, not just Wifi. And oftentimes, disconnecting that cellular connection will also disable major features of the car (like the radio and Bluetooth, which you claim will work just fine) because it’s all integrated on the same circuit board.
In some cases your car will even fucking throw error codes that will cause you to fail a state inspection. Meaning you’re forced to reconnect it before you can pass inspection and update your car registration. And nobody wants to take the time or effort to rip their dashboard apart every year for inspection. Auto manufacturers know this, and it’s exactly why they do it as a deterrent.
Buy an older used ICE and have it converted to electric.
What does this have to do with the computer application software Firefox? Mozilla continues to loose the point of the company with this crap. Are they trying to hide the fact that shoved unneeded AI and yet more unwanted file support into the latest version?
the mozilla foundation is also a non-profit that studies how much privacy certain things have. I’m perfectly fine with this.
They only have money to do that because of their browser, yet they keep laying off people from their browser division.
Don’t. Despite the beliefs in modern cars saving the environment you’d probably do better to go vegetarian and repair an old gasoline car. Or you know use public transit with prepaid cards.
I don’t really care about car privacy myself.
Where I drive to isn’t really a secret, social events are organized on Discord. And if driving recklessly raises my insurance premiums then that’s deserved. I wouldn’t risk something as expensive as a car with privacy hacks.
Then you’re lacking in imagination.
Similar data have outed people’s pregnancies, relationships and locations, which has been used to let people be stalked and even murdered.
Car data can be sold and amalgamated to create a very precise profile of you, available to be purchased by anyone. Anyone with about $100 can purchase access to your daily/weekly schedule, including physical locations, and can easily steal your identity, if not rob or murder you.
Also, foreign propaganda can similarly profile you and hyper target influence campaigns.
You should, privacy is a human right which is being stripped away from us.
You’re basically saying I don’t really care about my human rights.
Without privacy, you’re one step closer to an authoritan regime, where mass surveillance helps prevent an uprising of the people against it.
E.g. Russia, where you “accidentally slit your throat while shaving” when you go against Putin.
“I’ve got nothing to hide”
