this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2025
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Privacy

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Explaining in good detail why people should care about how modern cars have become a privacy nightmare. From Regular Car Reviews.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago (6 children)

Anyone know any make/model that doesn't call home or is easy to disable?

I don't want to replace my 2012 Honda due partially to this bullshit.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago (2 children)

None. Every single modern vehicle built by every major manufacturer has copius tracking and phone-home features, even the most basic of basic stripped down fleet vehicles with no infotainment still do it.

If you're electronically inclined, one could probably find a modern vehicle that is sufficiently modular and remove/disable the phone-home systems. (GM's OnStar I believe is still fairly defeatable these days, as it is or was a separate computer module). But unless you have deep, innate knowledge of RF and can go so far as to band scan your vehicle after you remove or destroy the relevant wireless tech, there is no guarantee you will get 100% secure. And many of those systems are now (intentionally) deeply integrated with the rest of the body control devices and alarm systems, defeating them may throw errors that will cripple your car into engine limp mode or endless nuisance alerts.

This also doesn't account for the fact that modern vehicles do a lot of saved-trip logging that would still be available locally, if someone were so inclined to gain physical access to and/or confiscate your vehicle to download said logs.

Buy used and keep fixing them, or stop driving, those are your options. Welcome to late stage capitalism, sucks to suck, will that be cash or card?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Sounds like I'm going to stick with a beater and get an eBike haha

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Those will work great until the government mandated tracking chips are forcibly implanted into all of us. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

I mean, you can still leave your cell phone at home but you know you never do.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Subarus are pretty easy to kill, the telematics unit sits under the head unit and comes out in about 15 minutes, 30min and a $60 harness total for the job

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

Fuck yeah. I like Subarus too. Toss up between Toyota or Subaru initially.

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