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How can this be stopped, from a technical perspective? Can I wrap the comms in a Faraday cage? Obviously it would be better to have this action be illegal. But
by tomrod 3d ago
How can this be stopped, from a technical perspective? Can I wrap the comms in a Faraday cage?
Obviously it would be better to have this action be illegal. But with legal privacy protections eroding in the US and other countries, it seems prudent to have a better understanding of the systems involved in the immoral surveillance.
- Tepix 3d agoRemember that story a week ago „everything I own, owned“? That’s one way.
- schmeichel 3d agoIt is possible to remove the hardware itself that is responsible for this, but depending on the car it can very involved: https://arkadiyt.com/2026/05/13/removing-the-modem-and-gps-from-my-rav4/ https://arkadiyt.com/2026/05/13/removing-the-modem-and-gps-f...
- forgetfreeman 3d agoSimple: don't own a vehicle with this capability.
- tomrod 3d agoMuch like owning a home without an HOA attached, it is becoming harder and harder to meet this requirement. It also seems to conflict with `right-to-repair` laws if the capability is legally required.
- ksudb 3d ago[dead]
- cucumber3732842 3d ago>Much like owning a home without an HOA attached, it is becoming harder and harder to meet this requirement. The near universal proliferation of owner's associations and management groups and whatnot for developments larger than ~1ac (the EPA threshold, some states/towns have lower) is something you can lay at the feet of the Clean Water Act and it's implementation and precedents over the following decades. The exact area of the buildings, the driveways, the community park and gazebo, etc, etc, are necessary features of the site plan that makes the math that is required to meet stormwater/environmental requirements. And and some legal entity has to be responsible for that in perpetuity. Enter the HOA. This is also why HOAs often won't allow you to expand your driveway or add a non-permeable patio, it could (prob not, but still) ruin the environmental calculations they're responsible for enforcing as a condition. I'm not nearly as familiar with car regulatory stuff but I would bet a lot of money that they're using OTA telematics to check some sort of compliance box...
- tomrod 3d agoI believe it was Strongtowns reporting a few months back that HOAs are generally being driven by developers, the only folks with (a) land to build in bulk; (b) capital, relationships, and experience to get fully through permitting in bulk; (c) building a substantial fraction of SFH.
- cucumber3732842 3d agoStrongtowns is happy to follow the money and incentives on all sorts of other issues. Why do they just throw up their hands and say "it's the developers" on this issue? Developers don't do anything that costs money, like set up an HOA, without a reason. The developers create the HOA because you need your >1ac residential development to pass stormwater permitting. While you theoretically could make each individual .25ac parcel you're putting a house on compliant it's infinitely cheaper to just ignore all that, grade everything toward the road, dig a ditch, send the contents of the ditch through your stormwater treatment features, build in a little margin to those items, show the permitting authority the numbers that prove it passes with flying colors and when some jerk says "but what if X Y Z changes" you point to the excess you built in and tell them to GFY. Now, where it really gets evil is when you start really pinching pennies or where the rules change over the course of the process making your numbers not work. Say you've got a lot of grade, a lot of rainfall, a lot of stormwater you gotta "treat". Well, you start adding rules to the HOA. Require certain parts of the lots remains grass or planter or whatever. Disallow patios, but do allow wood decks because the municipality considers those pervious, etc, etc. Or maybe the results you've got are marginal but you throw the bureaucrats a bone by saying you'll disallow car-ports and sheds in the HOA rules to prevent people from adding impervious surface. Or maybe you're uphill of some wetlands but not close enough to be regulated by default you promise to disallow working on cars and require people pick up their pet waste and not use lawn fertilizer or some other laundry list of certain things in order to make the local town's wetlands people comfortable not raising objection and claiming jurisdiction. And of course, however these rules and plans shake out, the HOA is responsible for implementation in perpetuity.
- thfuran 3d agoThere’s no reason that sort of compliance needs an HOA. Most places already have building codes enforced by mandatory government inspections for major renovations.
- calvinmorrison 3d agoHow do you think right-to-repair intersects with cars? An obvious thing may be to say the software must be published or the spec released, but we've had computers in cars since the 80s. It seems like a tall task but people can and do reverse engineer entire ECU systems (See Trionic Tuning) Another seemingly very obvious one - requiring manufacturers to publish specifications regarding ALL OBD interface options. Of course this immediately runs into trouble. Saab for example gated features of the security system to prevent key reprogramming, swapping of certain components without a dial out to the internet using specific saab software that runs on a laptop and interfaces.
- tomrod 3d ago> How do you think right-to-repair intersects with cars? Strongly. You don't own the thing you purchased if you can't legally repair it or legally obtain the knowledge to repair it. At beat you're paying an overpriced lease and granting a liability waiver.
- willis936 3d agoI've had good luck with pulling service manuals, finding the telematics antenna connectors, and unplugging them. It's popular to pull the telematics module fuse, but that typically disables internal microphones and GPS that are used by android auto and carplay. This severely degrades features spouses expect to just work. The antenna pulling is a much lighter touch.
- chneu 3d agoThe amount of times I see "I'd like to do the right thing but my spouse isn't on board" is mind boggling. It's wild how convenience trumps everything and then we look back to say, "we should have done better."
- willis936 3d agoOkay it's a red herring here. I also like to use carplay and the phone's GPS is truly awful to use. I also like to dictate texts and take calls in my car. These are things that don't need to be sacrificed if a scalpel is used in place of a butcher's knife. Sometimes it helps to have someone with their priorities in order keeping a reality check on people who don't always stay grounded.
- rozal 3d ago[dead]
- greenavocado 3d agoYou should be using a 50 ohm 1 watt dummy load / termination. It's better at attenuating the signal than leaving the antenna unplugged.
- willis936 3d agoYou're implying the stub of an exposed coax inside a faraday cage is capable of establishing a link with cell towers. This doesn't really pass fermi tests and I've never observed it myself, just read the paranoid concerns of people online. Regardless, taping some foil around the connectors with the foil making okay contact with the metal chassis is more than enough attenuation at sub GHz microwave to remove this concern without having to source specialty terminations and crimpers (or worse, non-reversible damage to the OEM cable assemblies by repurposing their terminations). I've done the foil+tape on some of my vehicles, but it hasn't made a difference in binary "does it connect or not?" testing.
- WarmWash 3d agoWhat sucks is that at least with my car, if you pull their access, you also lose all your remote access as well, and the ability to receive updates.
- ryandrake 3d agoWhy does a car need "remote access" and to "receive updates?" I'd consider this a bonus side effect.
- ellisv 3d agoPeople who live in cold or hot places like to prestart the climate control in their car.
- derwiki 3d agoWhy do you need remote access to your car? What updates does your car need?
- slau 3d agoIt’s practical to see battery level so I can optimise the electricity price at which I charge it. Although it wasn’t worth the cost of the 3 year subscription so I now just estimate the charge status based on the charge’s power consumption. If the car is at 10% battery, it may be worth charging at .15 or .3€/kWh. If it’s at 70% charge, I’ll wait until the price drops to .005€/kWh. The whole thing is automated in HA.
- WarmWash 3d agoYou can do stuff like like turn it on to heat or cool the cabin, live track it's location, lock/unlock doors, open/close trunk, and updates are mostly for the infotainment systemn and driving assists. Their is a cell modem in the car, so all these features are available anywhere the car has cell service.
- drnick1 3d ago
- natch 3d ago[flagged]
- m4ck_ 3d agoHaven't they been caught snooping on customers before with their in car surveillance?
- skrause 3d agoI want a car that doesn't collect the data, not one that gives a pinky promise not to sell still collected data.
- pnw 3d agoWhen given the choice between privacy and convenience, the great majority of consumers choose convenience over and over again. I'm not sure what the solution is, but it's not going to be market based if you look at any recent trends. Interest in privacy is unfortunately a niche concern outside of places like HN. Anyone who has tried to market a privacy oriented product knows what I am talking about.
- bix6 3d agoWhich brand? And what's to stop them from changing your opt in toggle on after an update as we've seen countless companies do time and time again?
- mnmalst 3d agoWhich brand is that if you don't mind me asking?
- SirHackalot 3d ago[flagged]
- 93po 3d agodon't forget that elon is personally responsible for the deaths of 14 million people, now ranked #4 just below hitler and above stalin
- base698 3d agoYou learn animal husbandry and join the Amish.