This is why I hate the online car owner forums. Car owners ask reasonable questions like these and people sneer in their replies saying "that's a horrible idea" as if somehow every car owner agreed to universal tracking into telemetry and is totally fine with it.
My daily is a 1997 Range Rover. You want to update the computer? Sure, you need to remove the desktop PC-sized box of 68HC11-family chips from under the driver's seat and desolder the two big 144-pin ones.
I honestly can't either. A lot of people drive around with navigation set on their phones which also track every movement and knows your exact location and travel speed, might even know how aggressive you drive based on accelerometer data and all that info can be uploaded from navigation app like Waze which is very popular
Get a determined ex-partner who knows a lot about you and wants to harm you or kidnap your children. For most people this represents the greatest immediate risk with this kind of data.
When I was a younger man, audio visual forums used to have an unfortunately sexist, but fairly good conceptual measure they called “wife acceptance factor”. It should really just be partner acceptance factor. Regardless of whom you are with, I hope they would physically intervene before letting you do this. What is the point? All of these posts feel like they miss the forest for the trees. Don’t like This Modern World? Fair enough, start by leaving your phone at home. Pay cash. And so forth. The author’s problems would be better solved by taking the bus. If you’re going to get into messing with cars, the wiring harness is not the place to start. Every trip to the dealer or any other mechanic is going to be painful right up until you finally give up and try to private sale the vehicle. At some point in that process, after you have dropped the price by over half the Kelley Blue Book value (or whatever Palantir shit replaces that) you may actually hear yourself explaining to the pleasantly smiling with a certain look in their eye non buyer about how you had to do this.
I will admit my bias. Fair play to the author for putting this all together but it reads like a very intricate aluminum foil hat.
1) My auto insurance is already too expensive. I have zero interest in "oh yeah we had to add to your driver factor because telematics says you exceeded the speed limit 11 times last year :^)". Less tracking is just a bonus.
2) He made no irreversible changes to the vehicle. Just keep the part and plug it back in when you need it for service/inspection or whatever.
3) "Telematics disabled" probably adds to the resale value of the car.
What are you talking about? People sell used cars with broken stuff all the time. You don't have to tell the buyer that you intentionally broke that feature. The mechanics that I use would all consider this modification entirely reasonable and not say anything about it after you explained yourself.
Also my spouse is just as paranoid as this guy is and when I told her what new vehicles collect she was happy she had an older model car. So this is not really a thing.
I cannot imagine the lack of concern about my privacy that it would take to make me daily-drive a car that hadn't been put through this process.
(I dread the day my 2007 Civic is no longer usable.)
Not to mention, people kept saying "Who cares, you're being silly" then multiple companies were caught selling into to insurance companies.
This is why I hate the online car owner forums. Car owners ask reasonable questions like these and people sneer in their replies saying "that's a horrible idea" as if somehow every car owner agreed to universal tracking into telemetry and is totally fine with it.
My daily is a 1997 Range Rover. You want to update the computer? Sure, you need to remove the desktop PC-sized box of 68HC11-family chips from under the driver's seat and desolder the two big 144-pin ones.
I honestly can't either. A lot of people drive around with navigation set on their phones which also track every movement and knows your exact location and travel speed, might even know how aggressive you drive based on accelerometer data and all that info can be uploaded from navigation app like Waze which is very popular
Get a determined ex-partner who knows a lot about you and wants to harm you or kidnap your children. For most people this represents the greatest immediate risk with this kind of data.
How will they get access to this data? Hax into Toyota to track this one specific Rav4?
[dead]
Step 1. Be very, very single
When I was a younger man, audio visual forums used to have an unfortunately sexist, but fairly good conceptual measure they called “wife acceptance factor”. It should really just be partner acceptance factor. Regardless of whom you are with, I hope they would physically intervene before letting you do this. What is the point? All of these posts feel like they miss the forest for the trees. Don’t like This Modern World? Fair enough, start by leaving your phone at home. Pay cash. And so forth. The author’s problems would be better solved by taking the bus. If you’re going to get into messing with cars, the wiring harness is not the place to start. Every trip to the dealer or any other mechanic is going to be painful right up until you finally give up and try to private sale the vehicle. At some point in that process, after you have dropped the price by over half the Kelley Blue Book value (or whatever Palantir shit replaces that) you may actually hear yourself explaining to the pleasantly smiling with a certain look in their eye non buyer about how you had to do this.
I will admit my bias. Fair play to the author for putting this all together but it reads like a very intricate aluminum foil hat.
Counterpoints:
1) My auto insurance is already too expensive. I have zero interest in "oh yeah we had to add to your driver factor because telematics says you exceeded the speed limit 11 times last year :^)". Less tracking is just a bonus.
2) He made no irreversible changes to the vehicle. Just keep the part and plug it back in when you need it for service/inspection or whatever.
3) "Telematics disabled" probably adds to the resale value of the car.
So the authors goal is to reduce his car's ability to transmit his data to Toyota.
His solution: disconnect the cell modem
Your solution: Be single, never drive a car ever, and leave your phone at home.
?????
What are you talking about? People sell used cars with broken stuff all the time. You don't have to tell the buyer that you intentionally broke that feature. The mechanics that I use would all consider this modification entirely reasonable and not say anything about it after you explained yourself.
Also my spouse is just as paranoid as this guy is and when I told her what new vehicles collect she was happy she had an older model car. So this is not really a thing.