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.

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.

    • scoobford ( scoobford@piefed.blahaj.zone ) English
      2·
      5 months ago

      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.

      • sem ( sem@piefed.blahaj.zone ) English
        1·
        5 months ago

        A cellphone doesn’t have a visible antenna, yet it transmits. I’m only saying this because I dont know about cars… are you removing the radio receiver antenna, or is there a cell phone antenna hidden in the car somewhere that can also be removed?

        • GreenCrunch ( GreenCrunch@piefed.blahaj.zone ) English
          2·
          4 months ago

          My understanding is that the radio antenna module on the roof will have several antennas (AM/FM radio, satellite radio, GPS, mobile data), and you could disconnect the mobile data and GPS from the telemetry module, after which it would appear to the car that it just didn’t have service. I haven’t done this myself though so I’m not sure

  • Apathy Tree ( ApathyTree@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) English
    10·
    5 months ago

    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.