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?
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.
You can’t! Even if you don’t use the cell phone based connections the car still has its own systems to wirelessly transmit data out.
You could yank the fuses associated with the cellular antennas but they’re attached to other electrical systems you’d want like the radio in every case I’ve experienced.
Also the data will be locally cached and can be collected when serviced or cause strange failures when it fills up the cars storage space. If considerate, smart engineers designed the car, they’d have different actual systems for the ecu, mcu, tcu and what have you but I’ve encountered one electric where it’s all in one.
So that’s scary.
Don’t buy a car made before 2007 and don’t buy an electric unless you know exactly what you’re doing I guess.
Or treat driving like a surveilled activity you partake of in public.
Can’t you just replace the radio? Or is it one of those custom fits
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
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.
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.
Lucky for them ethical hackers (CCC) found that and did not use the data.
In other words “ethical hackers” wasted a great opportunity to give shithead politicians a taste of their own venom. Very frustrating.
Yea, CCC actually has a huge problem by being too ethical. Apparently they had cases were the data protection authority did not force companies to disclose the leak because access by CCC does not constitute access by a malicious third party; absolutely bonkers. Just because the malicious party didn’t open their mouth doesn’t mean they haven’t accessed the data, you pigeon.
Lucky for them ethical hackers (CCC) found that and did not use the data.
I think the most effective way to ensure privacy is to find data mined on anti-privacy politicians and release all of it to the public.
I wish I knew how.
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.
There’s plenty of perfectly fine used vehicles that are old enough to have physical controls, but new enough to still have a reverse camera and Android Auto. Personally I’m not buying any new vehicle with a cellular modem.
Yes, but this is kind of missing the point. We can’t all just buy old cards forever.
Watch a lot of the car renovation shows.
You can have an old car completely renovated for like 30k
That’s cheaper than just about any brand new car.
And you can keep buying old cars. You just are limited in selection.
I know one mechanic who converted an old Chevy S10 into an electric vehicle. It cost also about 30k and that was 13 years ago. He could do it easier, cheaper and better with today’s parts availability.
These are in Canadian prices
After rebuilding it, you drive your new 30k EV out of its refit garage. Pulling out into the road, you immediately get hit by someone using their cell phone, totalling your car.
The insurance company offers you $5k for your vehicle, as they value it as a twenty year old used car on a rebuilt title.
These things are never that simple.
… No that’s not how it works if you don’t want it to.
He said he paid about 120 dollars extra for some specific type of coverage due to the custom nature of the work on his insurance and when it did get into a collision, he got more than it cost him to repair it.
He did that project as a curiosity and used it as a shop vehicle, and it got a lot of use iirc
On the technological side of things, you’re pretty much fucked no matter what. Virtually all car companies now have proprietary app integrations, partnerships with Google and Apple, and other anti-privacy features.
Some practical things you can do-
Opt out of as much data collection and sharing as you can. Read the manual and menu dive to disable optional features you don’t need.
If you finance or lease from the dealer, there are likely additional data disclosures and third party sharing that you can opt out of. Read all the paperwork when you sign your purchase or lease documents. In my case I had to literally fill out and mail something in (they don’t want it to be easy to opt-out because they make money from sharing the data with third parties).
With how expensive current cars are I don’t know how they manage to get away with this.
Usually I go by the rule that if it’s free and for profit you are the product, but cars are growing more expensive and yet they still inhibit your privacy.
So, the options I see here are:
- Buying an older vehicle
- Disconnecting the modem and dealing with the car potentially refusing to work after a period of time or potentially uploading locally saved data when taken for service
- Spending a lot of time and money to convert an old ICE car to an EV and dealing with a janky EV that probably has a limited range under 100 miles
None of these are great options.
Yes but if you start building that kind of community they will stop being janky.
It’s honestly a good place to start.
As people learn how to do it, and discover all the landmines of doing it, that will clear the path fire the next generation of modders and custom work. This would create an opportunity for new markets.
I mean just look at where 3d printing is today. It’s great how far that enthusiast culture has grown and developed. No reason it can’t continue.
Sand things like the Slate truck that is intentionally developed for you to modify, could accelerate that exact community.
Honestly if you can get me the funding, I’ll start this community myself
what’s wrong with 2015 or older with low mileage?
it’s hard to get a reliable 10 year old car with low milage… harder every year until it will be impossible sooner than later
I just bought one today because of that. they’re just getting older the longer I wait, if I don’t need it right now, I might as well buy it so that it’s not getting rustier being driven by someone else
Toyota, Honda, or Mazda are good bets.
Nothing; I’m currently driving cars even older than that. It’s just that as time goes on, it’s going to be harder and harder to find.
That option becomes a more remote opportunity with each passing year as stock diminishes so trying to find a long-term solution now makes sense.
- Remove the modem, sometimes called the TCU.
- Buy a Slate truck. It has no connectivity.
E: if you have the disposable funds or the skills you can do an EV conversion.
Slate trucks loot a little bit too gimicky for me, and I’m not sure if it’s coming to my country either.
Wouldn’t be surprised if it kept all the data internally and then published it to their servers when you go for to a service center or do maintenance.
If they aren’t already will be only a matter of time before they do this
The sad thing is you paid to get a car with a TCU, then paid a mechnic to remove it. Assuming you’re not a mechnic/hobbist yourself.
It’s good that Mozilla is shaming car companies and shining a spotlight on the issue. Journalists need to ask about tracking and privacy when a new car model comes out. Buyer should ask sellers the same.
no, I paid to get a car without that telemetry, as it would be part of the condition of sale
people don’t need to just accept what the dealer says. they can tell them to fuck off and go buy somewhere else
I often find “free market baby” doesn’t work with monopolies, or if all companies are doing the same evil thing.
true, effectiveness is not guaranteed
but you can still opt out entirely. bought a 2012 without that bullshit just yesterday
I find myself often paying more for less these days. The Slate truck isn’t really a great deal either when comparing to something like the new Chevy Equinox EV.
“Bezos-backed”? There has to be a catch somewhere.
The catch is it’ll be enshittified as soon as it can.
Keeping an eye on it since no other company is offering a similar lack of connectivity, but also not going to be surprised if it doesn’t deliver on its promises.
Alternatively, if you can’t remove the modem, find and remove the antenna. And if you can’t remove the antenna try and surround it with a metal, like aluminum foil.
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.
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.
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.)
I find this a bit misleasing, especially when (in the uk) electricity is only ~50% renewables apparently.
https://www.zemo.org.uk/assets/workingdocuments/MC-P-11-15a Lifecycle emissions report.pdf
For example, a typical medium sized family car will create around 24 tonnes of CO2 during its life cycle, while an electric vehicle (EV) will produce around 18 tonnes over its life. For a battery EV, 46% of its total carbon footprint is generated at the factory.
So EVs are a small improvement. Since I enjoy older cars and my privacy a lot more, I’m gonna keep enjoying them and not let manafacturers ram EVs down my throat, especially when a lot of them are hideous SUVs.
Not intentionally being misleading, as I do have a footnote calling out not including carbon emissions from electricity generation as they vary so wildly based on the energy source.
But unlike ICE cars, EV emissions from energy sources are improving over time as nations build more and more renewable energy sources. Your linked report is correct, but potentially out of date already - the UK for instance was already at 58% in 2024, with a goal of full of 95%+ by the end of this decade.
Here in Australia, our uptake of residential solar has been so high that our energy providers are offering free electricity during peak daylight hours to all customers to help use up all of that excess production. It’s quite feasible for a significant portion of us here to be able to not only recharge an EV for free, but with next-to-no CO2 emissions.
Additionally, we now have a big Government subsidy in place to install batteries in our homes as well: ~£4,000 for a ~30kWh system, fully installed!
I share your love for older cars, but with a toddler and another one planned - we need to have a modern, safe car for peace of mind. But believe me, I will be ensuring that I disable as much telemetry as possible due to privacy concerns.
But for a secondary/weekend car - there is always the option of electrifying an older car, allowing for the best of both worlds - in a sense!
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.
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.
Buy a bike 😅
Works, but it definitely is not a solution for everyone. There are people who live in areas where it is too far to ride on a bike (and slow) and using public transport takes 2-3 times longer than by car. Especially some areas near cities.
Move then buy a bike.
instructions unclear. moved to the suburbs and bought a rolling coal lifted truck
I’ve got like 8 but that doesn’t do everything I need it to
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.
Well, my mom’s 2014 golf mk7 doesn’t have telematics. Just look at the specs and buy a car based on it.
Gladly, it will be years before I can afford a car that doesn’t respect my privacy.
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.
