Comment by bitparadox
14 hours ago
I posted a flavor of this comment on an article a few months ago, but it's relevant here:
I have a seven year old Volkswagen, not financed. I'm security conscious and made sure to disable all the data collection I could find in the companion app before removing my account, turn off remote access services, dig through the infotainment to turn off what I could, etc.
Last year I requested a Carfax on it, and one of the fields in the request was current mileage. I entered an estimate like 75000 miles. On form submission, that field failed validation with red subtext along the lines of 'this is less than the last reported mileage of 75345, reported <5 or so days prior>'. Checking my odometer and looking at my past few days' trips, that was indeed accurate.
The car hadn't been to a shop or out of my possession in weeks, so I can only assume the telemetry was still dialing home and selling to third parties despite my best efforts to disable it.
Tangential, but one of the concerns I have about these 'smart' cars is they have an expiration deadline.
There's an exceedingly common type of failure I have seen myself in industrial electronics and (has happened with Tesla at least once), that some module keeps a log of some kind in a nonvolatile flash, and this flash has a limited lifecycle, which the equipment reaches at some years into its life (or earlier, if the flash came from a bad batch, or more logging happens than planned).
At this point the board usually gets bricked and replacement is very hard due to cryptographic handshakes between components.
They've become cell phones on wheels. I'm disappointed with what vehicles (and phones too!) have become.
I share the sentiment. I want a new car, but only if I can guarantee all telemetry is hard disabled. But I don’t have the kind of money to buy a new car and risk bricking it. Luckily I’m pretty handy, so I’ll have to keep my 2014< cars forcefully running as long as I can.
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> I'm security conscious and made sure to disable all the data collection I could find in the companion app before removing my account, turn off remote access services, dig through the infotainment to turn off what I could, etc.
Android Auto, Apple CarPlay, OEM mobile app...Bluetooth??
Consider the business case of leased Comcast (as the largest ISP in the US) modems broadcasting open side-channel xfinitywifi SSIDs...essentially everywhere.
> turn off remote access services, dig through the infotainment to turn off what I could
This is never enough. You can't trust a software switch. You need to remove the hardware capability if you want to make sure the car isn't spying on you. In the best case, the telematics box has it's own fuse, and that may be enough. In other cases, you need to find the box and unplug it. The service manual will have it's location. In some cars it's easily accessible, in others less so and you need to remove the glove box or part of the dash. Dealers will probably refuse to do it, my advice would be to DIY or find an independent mechanic who will do it.
Find the telematic's antenna, and put a 50ohm resistor across it. It can scream into it's own private void.
It seems like this is not enough:
https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/simpler-solution-for-dis...
The most reliable way to permanently silence the cellular modem is to pull the relevant fuse. In the above case, this also disables the microphone, which I think is a positive. Unplugging the DCM entirely, however, seems to disable to right speaker, which is wired through the DCM for some reason.
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I Have No Antenna, and I Must Transmit.
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Weird -- usually VW likes to falsify its data, so I am surprised this data was so accurate.
Every business likes data collection, until they don't.
I have been thinking of upgrading from my 2003 Corolla to an electric (not Tesla). The Corolla hasn't had a single repair problem in 23 years!
My main motivation to get a better car was, DD goes to a super prestigious college and it seems degrading to put their bumper sticker on a 23 year old car! But I guess I won't get another car. Serves you right mfr mfrs!
See my other comment, but the fuse pulling stuff still works on GM EVs and disables connectivity, but the telematics unit may still be collecting offline to batch upload.
That's why it's better to replace it with a blown fuse instead, so that a helpful repair shop doesn't replace it when they see it missing.
This is why I pulled the fuse on the Data Communications Module (DCM) on my car. The device that transmits the telemetry simply doesn't get any juice.
Your mileage went from VW->telematics vendor->broker->carfax, thats the chain it usually follows. The fuse stops it but the real issue is the owner is the only one without the record.
You could probably find some interesting info if you send out some privacy requests through the chain. LexisNexis and Verisk are consumer reporting agencies, so they have to provide you a disclosure on request. Start there.
Is there usually a fuse that just turns off the telemetry? I would be surprised if that is the case. I could see the design being "if you turn this fuse off to turn off telemetry, you'll also lose these functions: ..." and if they did it "right" they'd make the car non-functional.
My car is from 2011 and I do wonder if there is any telemetry in it.
Yeah an electrical fuse for telemetry seems really odd. Even without malice it would be strange if disconnecting power to some part of the computer only affected telemetry.
I could see a fuse for cellular comms, be presumably that would also disable maps, contacting emergency services in an accident, etc. which might be an acceptable tradeoff.
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Probably has something to do with the fact that car companies are obsessed with having the thing modularized, each module needing a fuse.
There’s probably a fuse to turn off the cellular radio that transmits the data. Whether that’s all it covers may vary from car to car. Or in some models it’s probably possible to just disconnect the radio entirely.
Telemetry is usually a standalone module. Heres one off a 26 Hyundai Palisade -- Telematics (DCU) Part num: 96510P9100 firmware (OTA updatable) 01F.7.CAN.3.000.18.714.9
Its only job is to detect harsh acceleration and brake events. Probably being sold to your insurer.
So I first read this comment and thought is looked like AI and thought I’d give the benefit of the doubt. Then I saw this where there is no doubt: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49687774
I thought, I wonder if it’s the same guy? Sure enough.
Stop it.
He did acknowledge he posted something similar elsewhere a few months ago. I found his comment useful.
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No
> I’d give the benefit of the doubt.
So fucking do it! Who died and made you the style police?
> Stop it.
He's making reasonable points, in a readable fashion.
You, on the other hand...
What's your point? AI bad? Srsly, is that all you've got?
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All it would need is a wi-fi antenna internally, and then it could connect to an open wi-fi network anywhere. And it's going to be pretty much impossible to avoid ever driving your car within range of some open network.
It would have to find an open Wi-Fi network that isn't gated behind a captive portal, which is very rare. Rare enough that most telemetry would be too stale to be useful.
Cable ISPs such as Spectrum sell capacity on their customers routers for such situations, including ‘smart’ appliances.
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> which is very rare.
This depends a lot on the region/country. IN the US, open WiFi is unusual but it's pretty common in parts of asia, for example.
Lots of automotive OEMs want that specific kind of information for generic reasons (how many of what model made it to what mileage under what circumstances) that are entirely reasonable. Lots of them also want that info for warranty related reasons (you've hit the mileage limit and we won't do anything for you anymore). But, my state of Michigan is starting a program to evaluate replacing registration fees with mileage charges to account for the additional wear and tear on the roads from EVs that don't pay gas taxes to fund road repairs. This would require some kind of verification of mileage, which we can't currently do during emissions testing, since it doesn't exist here. Legally required data retention is becoming a bigger and bigger issue, particularly in light of the driver monitoring requirement starting in MY27 vehicles by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act terms. That will presumably be integrated into any black box recording in a crash and probably subpoenaed in any dispute going forward.
In other news, I think I'll be taking a trip to somewhere down south to find a nice, used 1999 F350 dually with a manual transmission, since they're going to cease to exist shortly...
I know you're not the culprit, but it's annoying to see crap like this (highly invasive tracking, ostensibly for slightly more efficient tax collection), when far cheaper, better efforts (like Rhode Island's attempt to add tolls for just semis -- 98-99% of their freeway maintenance costs) are killed before they have a chance to prove themselves.
Try finding the fuse and pulling it. It will be in the manual.
I would be very surprised if it was that simple - systems in modern cars are so interlinked that I would expect that pulling a fuse would cause something else to break, resulting in dash lights or broken functionality.
It's possible to find workarounds for things like this. One example: https://www.autoharnesshouse.com/69018.html
In my car it's on the same circuit as the infotainment system which does kinda make sense but also, damn them.
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Typically it’s tied to other components and pulling the fuse will take out other things like infotainment, speakers, etc.
Carfax also can report estimated mileage, but it might have a different flag in the system that allows override.
I've been handed a Carfax on my own car that has a reported mileage much greater than the actual mileage on the car, and the car has not been out of my possession.
Yet if you overestimated the mileage you would’ve been none the wiser!
What did you do, or what are you going to do? That would piss me off until i found the antenna and broke it
Where was the car serviced? Antennas or not, the dealer might just plug in and upload everything during service.
> Antennas or not, the dealer might just plug in and upload everything during service.
You should have an empty glovebox as well when you take it in for service if you don't trust the shop.
If you have registration / insurance paperwork, you're now on that shop's mailing list and can expect to get "$15 off your next oil change ..." flyers in the mail.
Couldn't you put some sort of faraday cage around the antenna?
What happened to just pulling (the mfr's) sim card?
It’s often an eSIM
Not trivial, not impossible
The most horrible part this crime is I read somewhere That the amount the car companies get for spying on your locations is some pathetic paltry amount like $1-$5 one time. These car companies sell you out to insurance companies and such so they can collect data and use it AGAINST you. Ghouls everywhere now.
Random Public data:
Honda sold data on roughly 97,000 cars to Verisk for $25,920—amounting to about 26 cents per car.
Hyundai sold data on about 1.7 million vehicles for roughly $1 million—about 61 cents per car
That doesn’t smell right. Why develop the telemetry and go to all of the trouble for such a paltry return? That probably wouldn’t even cover the legal consulation to cover their ass, much less go through the trouble of implementing and selling the telemetry.
It would be cheaper to do nothing if that were true.
"Resistance is futile." See also: LG TVs, etc.
It’s not futile. Write your congressperson and state representatives. If enough people do this around the country, laws will eventually be passed to prevent it.
This is why there are moral panics about things people feel in their guts: most people are reasonably easily unsettled and distracted by queer people, people who look different, people their people don’t trust being in charge.
It works. Most people are happier focusing and holding forth on that and repeating familiar statements than they are talking to congressional staff about policy.
Your car that you paid a lot for and you like and have positive useful experiences with every day? That’s going to be way farther down the list of things to worry about.
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