I wanted to get others’ takes but it seems like the only real way to get a non-spying car is to get an older car without any sort of telemetrics. I saw a video about different car companies’ security policies, well specifically the new Mental Outlaw video, and it just blew me away how even our cars aren’t safe. Anyone got tips for how to anonymize their car?
I have a 06 jeep wrangler, used to do 20 mpg but gets more around 15-17 now, which I plan on making some efficiency improvements. But its a pretty reliable engine and I live in a rural area so having an all terrain vehicle gives me some piece of mind.
If your planning on getting an older vehicle, do some preventative maintenance such as a new battery, make sure amps are equal or greater. Change the oil if it hasn’t been done. Get new belts. Get new spark plugs. Get a decent set of tires. Use fuel system cleaner.
If you plan on getting a newer vehicle you could probably pull a fuse to disable it from transmitting, but I don’t know if it would actually work.
Let me try this comment again.
There is no driving with privacy or anonymity unless you’re on private land.
Anyone got tips for how to anonymize their car?
Remove the license plate. You will rarely have privacy driving a car on a public road. You should disable the modem, of course, but you’re still not going to be driving anonymously or privately. Automated license plate readers means your travels are going into databases that very well could be breached at some point in time.
Law enforcement use of ALPRs is rapidly expanding, with tens of thousands of readers in use throughout the United States; one survey indicates that in 2016 and 2017 alone, 173 law enforcement agencies collectively scanned 2.5 billion license plates.
According to the latest available numbers from the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, 93 percent of police departments in cities with populations of 1 million or more use their own ALPR systems, some of which can scan nearly 2,000 license plates per minute. In cities with populations of 100,000 or more, 75 percent of police departments use ALPR systems.
Despite this expansive data collection effort, many departments have not developed a policy to govern the use of ALPR technology, or provided privacy protections.
Adding to this, automatic plate flippers exist and are pretty popular for show cars to display something else when parked. Typically wired to ignition so it shows your plate only when the cars running.
Issue is if you street park dependent on the state, if the vehicle registration is hidden by the plate being flipped they can likely tow it. Would work great for at work/in your driveway though. Could maybe just have a bypass switch for if you need to park somewhere and display the plate.
Still a pain in the ass that it’s this bad though.
Theyre also recording the make model car type car size etc so you’re still not immune from fingerprinting
The fact that your data is exposed to someone doesn’t mean that you have to give up and just let everyone else have it as well.
That’s not the point I’m making. You should disable your cars modem if it has one, but you still should have no expectation of privacy. Thinking you can have anonymity with a license plate displayed to everyone is foolish. It’s like asking how to be anonymous while wearing a name tag and the same clothes every day.
Cars are fascist, don’t drive one
Should be quite easy to remove any WiFi/cellular/satellite antennas from the car’s computer. (Might be trace/chip antennas, so make sure to get those). If you’re extra paranoid, get the GPS antenna too, so it can’t simply record data indefinitely.
Might take a few hours to go through the car to make sure you get everything, but you won’t be limited to super old cars.
I don’t believe for a second that the car won’t be sending either an unremovable error message, a constant and un-mute-able audible alarm, or a complete lockout of subsystems or the entire system itself. The best case scenario is that this is a mild inconvenience.
Does your car lock up outside of cell coverage? I’m not suggesting removing the radios themselves, just the antennas. To the car, it will just always be out of range.
The antenna used for talking to the keys might cause trouble, but those are either inherently short range inductive systems or are receivable using a 20$ RTL SDR to verify it’s not sending anything else.
I don’t recall what kind of car it was, but there was one that saved the phone number associated with any phone that connected via Bluetooth.
While I don’t think it’s likely as a way to trick people to connecting to get their phone number, it was a rental car which opened them up to impersonation scams. Knowing they just rented from the company and where in the city provides quite a bit of information on you.
Android has the ability to deny this information. If iOS has one it does jack shit because Apple doesn’t care about your privacy.
Buy an electric bicycle and use the money you would have spent on a car to run for a seat for local office on the platform to improve local transit infrastructure
How good are they in ice and snow? Probably a bit dangerous and cold I’d think.
I did all my transportation and shopping with a mountain bike for a year and it’s kind of difficult on snow and ice, fell over some. The trick is to never turn at all when on that stuff, but it’s still hard. The cold makes the oil for the mechanisms work worse too, you need special oil. My hands got very cold holding on to the handlebars, you need to find some balance between gloves that hold warmth and resist the wind and gloves that let you have enough dexterity for the brakes and shifters.
I live in the nordics, while you can get chain lubes meant for extreme cold, negative twenties to thirties should be fine to ride using any lube.
Interal bearing lubrication is not a concern, same for shifters and brakes. Hydraulic breaks are not a concern, provided there is no moisture in rhe system.
Gloves are a must, of course, but I’ve several sets for a range temperatures, you can do just fine all the way up to pretty thick finger gloves. Some people here like to use three finger gloves to let some of their fingers buddy up.
Studded tires also make a huge difference. I can ride without them, but studs basically eliminate the most common way to fall without seeing it coming, your tires just sliding out from under you on smooth ice.
Though it doesn’t help on loose snow thick enough the tire won’t sink through to contact the ground. For that you need width and tons of tread.
Bike poggies are worth looking into to keep your hands warm. Studded tires can help with slipping too
There are studded tires you can get for ice but I’m not certain about their application on electric bikes.
The problem with that though is they aren’t legal everywhere. I know where I’m at we can’t have studded tires.
Bicycles can’t or vehicles can’t? There’s a vast difference in weight and I imagine most wouldn’t even notice.
I know you can’t on a motorcycle so I’d assume you can’t on an ebike as well.
I don’t live in the snow so never tried in real life, but local laws usually classify different levels of two wheeled vehicles. Some laws treat level 2 and under, where most e-bikes are, the same as bicycles. Mopeds and motor-driven cycles are a level above that are allowed on surface streets the same as cars but too underpowered for the highway. Then the level above that is the traditional motorcycle that are allowed on streets and highways.
tl;dr, it might be allowed for e-bikes to have studded tires depending on how local laws classify it.
Yes buy studded tires will help a lot
As long as data harvesting is legal and profitable, privacy will be a cat and mouse game. Gotta wonder how much capital and human effort is invested into all these anti-consumer innovations.
I did not watch the mentioned video so I am not sure if what I am about to mention is discussed there or not. Also, sorry for the really long reply!
I am not aware of any available truly privacy respecting, modern cars. However, assuming theat you obtain one or you can do things like physically disconnect/remove all wireless connectivity from the car to make it as private/secure as possible, there still is little you can do to be truly anonymous.
Your car likely has a VIN and license plate as well as a vehicle registration. Assuming you legally obtained the vehicle and did not take any preventative measures prior to purchasing the car, those pieces of information will be tied back to you and your home address (or at least someone closely connected to you). You would need to initially obtain the vehicle via a compsy/LLC/partnership/etc. as the owner/renter/leasee of the vehicle and an address not associated to you. Additionally, you would need to find some means of avoiding or limiting the additional information connected to you that is likely required to obtain the vehicle like car insurance and your drivers license.
Additionally, any work that certain mechanics perform may be shared (either directly or indirectly) with data brokers - even just routine maintenance like an oil change or alignment. Hopefully you didn’t use your credit card, loyalty rewards program, etc. when you had any work done!
There is also CCTV, security cameras, and other video recorders that are nearly impossible to avoid. Given enough time/resources and maybe a little bit of information, your car could be tracked from its origin to destination locations. This location history can be used to identify you as the owner (or at least driver/passenger) of the car. Unless your car never leaves your garage, you can almost guarantee that your car is on some Ring camera, street camera, etc.
Furthermore, anything special or different about your car (custom decal, unusual window tinting, funny bumper sticker, uncommon color for the car, uncommon trim/package for the car, dented bumper, fancy rims, replaced tires, specific location of toll reader placement on the windshield, something hanging from your rear mirror, etc.) all help identify your car. The make/model and year of your car can also be used to identify your car if its not a common car in the area. These identifiers can be used to help track your car via the video feeds mentioned above.
Then there are license plate readers which are only slightly easier to avoid than the video recordings. Permanent, stationary license plate readers can be found on various public roads and parking lots. There are also people who drive around with license plate readers as part of their job for insurance/repossession purposes. You may be able to use some sort of cover over your license plate(s) to hinder the ability of license plate readers to capture your plate number, but that could be used to help identify your car in video feeds/recordings.
Depending on the car you might be able to physically disable telemetry. Here are some thoughts/ideas I’ve been collecting:
- Hit “SOS” button and opt-out of all services through customer service. This of course requires trusting the company to actually do it.
- It’s possible that the info could be stored locally and then uploaded when it gets serviced though
- Remove the fuse to the modem/data communication module (DCM)
- Disconnect wiring to the LTE antennas
- A number of people have mentioned that they can get the dealer to disconnect the telemetry as a precondition to buying. For instance, here.
- Jump the data communication module (DCM) cable with a ~$70 dongle to bypass just the telematics components
- Disconnect the DCM cable, which will likely gimp the infotainment if not other systems, or remove the entire DCM unit
Quite a few cars also still have a SIM card hidden somewhere, which can be removed. The location of it varies widely though and they’re usually pretty hard to find.
You need a line break between your paragraph and your list.
Depending on the car you might be able to physically disable telemetry. Here are some thoughts/ideas I’ve been collecting:
- Hit “SOS” button and opt-out of all services through customer service. This of course requires trusting the company to actually do it.
- It’s possible that the info could be stored locally and then uploaded when it gets serviced though
- Remove the fuse to the modem/data communication module (DCM)
- Disconnect wiring to the LTE antennas
- A number of people have mentioned that they can get the dealer to disconnect the telemetry as a precondition to buying. For instance, here.
- Jump the data communication module (DCM) cable with a ~$70 dongle to bypass just the telematics components
- Disconnect the DCM cable, which will likely gimp the infotainment if not other systems, or remove the entire DCM unit
Oh, it looked Ok in my app (Voyager). But I added the line break.
- Hit “SOS” button and opt-out of all services through customer service. This of course requires trusting the company to actually do it.
- Hit “SOS” button and opt-out of all services through customer service. This of course requires trusting the company to actually do it.
Old and serviceable. Don’t give me plastic
Take a look at motorcycles. They tend to be far behind the curve technology wise, and only Zerocycles have a telemetry system afaik.
they’re also dirty as fuck.
It’s possible to get cars as new as 2019 where you can just pull a fuse. But it starts to get tricky.
Example my C7 Vette it only took about that (it was a bit of an ordeal to not brick the car) but it’s not connected to shit anymore.
Telemetry data will still be saved in the car systems, but not broadcast anywhere. So not too bad
Right to repair must apply to cars as well.
I’ve got a 2009 dumb car and I am babying it because I dread having to try to buy a new to me car that isn’t full of telemetrics and other modern car garbage.
Learn how to work on it
I already do. I’m no mechanic, but I’ve made numerous repairs over the years and am familiar with and can do basic car maintenance.
I plan to buy 2003 Skoda Octavia for obvious reasons.
My cousin still drives her 2003 Octavia and it’s still in great shape. Diesel, manual and four wheel drive. Amazing car!
My car is built in 2003 and I don’t think I’m ever moving it on.
It peaked in 2005 before the driver inputs got overrides and and speed outputs started lying to you.
I couldn’t even imagine a car connected to the internet.
ITT people are all dismissive because you can’t actually be anonymous on the road (license plates, speed cameras…), but, honestly, I just want a car that doesn’t listen in on my conversations, sell my data to brokers, require any passanger to accept the privacy policy, or record the times I have sex (jk it won’t be able to if I don’t have any)
