Toyota, Progressive Insurance, and a data analytics firm are now being accused of collecting detailed personal driving information without proper consent
Next: Insurance premiums rise if you cannot be tracked and verified to be a safe driver.
In a sense that already exists, as I’m pretty sure there are extra plan benefits if you opt-in to more surveillance.
My Farmer’s agent offered a discount, I forgot how much, maybe 15% to use their app and location services. It was a few years back, I told them to get stuffed.
Honestly if a car has any form of internet connectivity built in, it should raise so many red flags before you even sit down to talk financing.
Good luck finding a modern car that doesn’t, I just yank out the power to the modem
My '24 Civic has no connectivity but bluetooth. I don’t know about the 25s.
my rates do seem high. I had a wreck a few years back but it was a dented door and fixed just fine. I work from home so I dont drive all that much, and the car is cheap. But it does have telemetry. I wonder if I should just bridge a resistor across the onstar antenna terminals
Casually reading, you could put a 50ohm or larger resistor there.
You will have a better result removing/disabling the module completely. There are several searchable tutorials based on the vehicle module.
Yes but if it ever goes into the shop a software update can teach it to misbehave when things are disconnected. An artificially weak signal, on the other hand, would fall under a practical failure mode they would have accommodated for in firmware.
Ah, I don’t think about dealerships unless I’m looking for used cars. I repair everything I own the best I can and move on when I can’t. It’s stressful, but I prefer it to a payment.
I wouldn’t mind doing this on my vehicle. Elaborate?
Searching for your car model + ‘disable modem’, ‘remove cellular’, ‘physically remove 5g’, etc. Will often come up with guides for specific vehicles.
In my car, it’s just a separate board you can just unplug.
There might be a dedicated fuse, also. If so, that would be the easiest solution
So, OnStar, for decades now, has had cellular activity whether you were paying for it or not. They just used to be careful about not selling data. But even if the user didn’t pay and the manufacturer didn’t sell, those models are trackable by ISP.
Sounds logical.
which part sounds logical?
That Onstar probably has decades of telemetry they’ve sold.
They definitely have. You have to jump through hoops to request and delete your data from some data broker. I had to do this, it was a massive report with no context and arbitrary statements like “hard braking” and “excessive acceleration”. They sell the data to brokers who sell out to insurance companies to raise your rates based on these arbitrary reports.
It’s all so disgusting.
What amazes me is how many people not only willingly giving up their privacy without any understand of what it means to do so or the implications of it, but also so many have a defense of ‘if you are in public you have no right or expectation of privacy at all’.
This is bullshit. While you have a reduced expectation of privacy by virtue of being in public, the fact that your movements are alp documented so completely either by private or public entities without warrants, your face and expressions and dress scanned, and even videos you watch on your phone based on some flock cameras I have seen is an outrage.
People have a right to sometimes just go out and disappear for a while. I used to do it all the damn as a teenager and very young adult. I didnt run away from home or skip school, but I needed genuine alone time to think and let my mind and body feel free for a moment and give myself a minor mental reset. This is impossible if I am on camera all the damn time. The last thing I want is to take a walk through some artsy parts of town or a park and then get ads on ‘want to escape? Here are some nice vacation spots to go to’, or get ads on shit just because I did some window shopping or in-store browsing.
And then there is this shit. How all that spying affects you financially and maybe even professionally as AI now is reviewing CVs and you better damn well believe that they will be integrating all information on you if you apply anywhere.
And for the ‘this prevents crime’ shit no it does not. Crime resolution rates have been dropping throughout even the wealthiest most surveillance heavy countries. A study from around 20 years ago in the UK showed thay the places with the most cameras don’t have less crime or more solved crimes than those with less cameras. More funding for police and more police tools have ironically lead to a massive reduction in murder rate resolution in the US and elsewhere. Which is surprising snd terrifying… because just how many innocent people have been put in prison in the past without anyone knowing?
It is entirely about social control. Have you ever wondered why protests seem to be less effective and there aren’t that many revolutions or successful coups as there were last century? That is why. (And yes I am aware they still happen, but they are much harder to pull off)
The best example I’ve heard is, if I wait outside your house and follow you around everywhere you go, every single time you leave the house, even though you’re “in public,” that’s still a crime and it’s called “stalking.”
Even searching for someone obsessively online and being a little TOO interested in them online is cyberstalking.
The line there is different than in off-line settings, but it does exist. Someone who is a fan of an entertainer and likes all of their online posts is one thing, but a person who has plans that involve harassment is something else.
Precisely right. We should press charges against all the big tech companies for stalking us.
Spyware in our cars? This is unacceptable.
YEAR OF THE LINUX CAR
2036 maybe
But can I choose the distro?
My car drives Arch, by the way.
Like Jackie Welles rides an Arch in CP2077? Count me in!
i use carch btw
There’s probably already 10-15 linux computers in your car.
Teslas run on the linux kernel lol…
fuck, almost everything does
The infotainment system probably runs Yocto Linux, so it is already the year of Linux card
But is the system libre enough to make it year of the linux car
Because Android phones (linux kernel fork libre per gpl obligation, rest of os proprietary and evil) do not constitute the year of the Linux phone
My car is 26 years old, truck is 30… No internet connectivity there, and yet my rates going up steadily every year with nothing on my driving record. 🙄
They charge you extra since they can’t sell your data.
Yup. Older cars costing more to insure is yet another poor tax.
This is calculated by the odds of your car breaking(higher as the car ages/parts become more expensive), the chances you are going to get into an accident (go higher as you age up after 30 something), and the chances another driver will crash into you without your fault(this saw a large increase after COVID, people just started driving worse for some reason I don’t know). All of this means that you will pay more for insurance and it 100% isn’t your fault.
We’re all collectively paying global insurance for the devastating climate change>> bushfire, flooding, hurricanes, extreme weather.
Another reminder why I chose to own a bicycle.
I used to dream to have a car, but the more I grew up, the more I realize just how fucking hard it is to have one, especially paperwork and driving demands more situational awareness, of not just the space around the car but also other vehicles on the road.
Not an option for many of us. Even in the city, where I’ve gotten around on bicycle for years and years with no car before, it was a hostile environment, and motorists hate bicyclists with a passion. I didn’t ride in the street either like in the lane holding up traffic either. But many would go out of their way to hit you, including police. I was too quick for them though.
I rode my bike in the a smaller city for nearly a decade regularly just fine. The one time I was hit by a car, luckily barely, I was on foot.
To me, here at least, when I left the small city,that’s where it gets wild. When the place has no pedestrians, and it’s all cars only, with really limited side walks. Those are the scary places to ride.
Yeah in the country it’s a different beast entirely. Riding on the shoulder of highways and county roads. I do the left side so I can see the cars coming at me and get out of the way. Going with traffic on the shoulder is madness and trusting everyone to see you and not hit you, yet half the population thinks that’s the way it should be done.
But good luck getting anywhere in the country right now on a bike. There are snowbanks piled up, little shoulder is left off of main highways, you would have to ride in the road, switching back and forth left to right to avoid incoming cars, or stop and pull yourself into the snowbank. It’s just not possible for me here. Half the year it’s just not possible in much of the north.
I’ve always been more comfortable riding with traffic, and I don’t understand how it feels safer going opposite. But I’m not a rule enforcer, do what’s best for you. Anywhere without common walkers/public transport too. Its not just like, “the country”. Suburbs and strip malls.
I’ve also ridden in winter, in New England. It’s baby thought thinking you can’t. No bad weather, just bad dress, and you warm up quick.
I’m saying on the shoulder of a highway, not in the lane. Riding on the right hand side means constantly looking back over your shoulder, and trusting cars to have seen you and not decided to bust onto the shoulder. It’s madness, and it’s a misunderstanding that leads some people to think you are supposed to, experts have made it clear it’s safer to see traffic coming at you in such situations so you can get out of the way.
And ha, no, you can’t ride your bike where I am right now as I explained. There is no shoulder, you are in the lane, lanes covered in packed down snow. Baby thinking is a rather insulting way to respond to a situation you clearly do not understand. Riding in the lane with cars going 55 mph or faster on ice and snow cannot be done here right now, snowplows leave 4 or a 5 feet of snowbank off the road, something someone from new england should know, city boy.
I got a laugh out of that “baby thought” jab. I’ve lived where it wasn’t safe to walk by the roads during winter, much less cycle there. With no bike lane or even a road shoulder to speak of and a foot or more of snow, you end up with two choices: cycle in a snow bank or hope traffic isn’t coming when you end up horizontal in the road.
So do nothing. Don’t fight for better infrastructures, just stay car centric. I love paying thousands of dollars a year to get to work/shops/friends. Wah wah.
I’ve ridden these roads in winter. I’ve done it from necessity. Yeah it’s scary at first. No, not all places it’s possible, yes, it could be done more if not for your preference for comfort. Wahhh “I can’t and nothing can change this”. Fucking hell. I’m a down vote queen today eh? Y’all need to watch some “just not bikes” and maybe help change perceptions.
Or stay in your comfy car. I don’t care. I’m literally in the position where I can’t get a job because I don’t have a car, or a bike, or public transport, and a kid with mad appointments right now. And I’m extra spicy about it. I miss being free on my bike and marking open availability on job apps. I’m spicy okay? Down vote away. I uses to ride 7 miles in winter, snow, sleet, ice, to be at work for 6 am. Then seven miles home, 6 days a week. Two years. It can be done. Its not fun no, but its not like, the most difficult thing either. Y’all just used to comfort. I’m used to poverty. It’s fucking fine.
As we learned in Minnesota, vaguely gesturing your car in someone’s direction is grounds for summary execution without investigation. Things are different for bicyclists now.
You pointed that bike at that agent. Clearly you are an antifa death squad. Or I’m sorry three star antifa general involved in terror plots on american greatness, likely out of your freedom hatred. Something something transexuals woke radical left you had it coming! /s
This is such a bad precedent because it’s on video, there is no question as to the truth of the matter. The agent engineered the situation, used his phone hand to touch the car as it was moving to make it appear like he was hit, and they cynically used that to claim so, despite frame by frame analysis that gives lie to all of their story.
Their cheerleaders supporting this, pretending to believe the lie, or god forbid believing it, because they think they don’t like the executed, are fools. Federal agents should not be summarily executing anyone on the street without cause then slandering their victims to justify it afterwards. That is something everyone agreed on not long ago. A good share of conservatives might still agree, but just believe the execution was self defense, but too many don’t, and relish the others getting targeted as if they will forever remain safe from being labelled an other. As if when they achieve absolute power they won’t shrink the old boy clubs.
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Shut the fuck up.
Thanks.
Love you :*
I saw someone riding a bike the other day on the road and feared for his safety.
I couldn’t do that to my ancestors
These behaviors will only get worse, unless we change the system. We just need to help each other understand that, and then execute it!
There won’t just be an “AI” bubble burst if this surveillance tech bros crap goes on for too much longer. Everyone wants to be an overlord. No one just wants to make a reasonable healthy profit anymore.
It’s because high constant profits were never sustainable. Perpetually maximizing GDP in the short term was never a good idea to begin with. But that’s the macroeconomic policy.
We’ve been preventing all forest fires at all costs and guess what - there’s still gonna be a big forest fire.
Yes they do. The issue is that people won’t really tell each other about products and business that are doing that. They won’t boycott the bad shit, either. That goes for everyone… BMW, IBM, and BOSS are still around and that’s the tip of the list.
In order to get seen you got to pay those people that want to be an overlord.
So you see the issue.
my country recently got a new behavioral car insurer. their very first move? running brainwashing 0.5 second ads on popular TV channels, that just flashes thrir logo quickly, and has just enough time to announce the name of the company. I’m not exaggerating. absolute parasite scumbags, every one of them must burn.
I don’t want to drive traffic to their site, but this one is it: https://web.archive.org/web/20260000000000*/https://drivello.hu/
stear clear from them, they have shown they are here for deception money, zero good intentions.
Can’t you rip out the wifi radio, or cover it in aluminum foil or something? This is ridiculous.
TCU is what we are looking for here, in modern automotive terms.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telematic_control_unit
This is the spyware box in most modern vehicles. Can you find it? Can you unplug it? What happens when you disconnect it from the computer bus of the car? Those are the questions we need answered for every car on the road, for our mutual benefit.
Manufacturers will certainly argue that voids the warranty. They might even win that fight in court these days.
I don’t give a fuck, I will do it anyway. I do what I want with what I own.
Chew through the wires and tell them it was a rat
Plus they can pull the data if you bring it for service.
You can pull the fuse but this also disables Bluetooth iirc.
Pull the fuse, good idea! I bet that would set off all kinds of alarms in the car’s computer and it would constantly tell you to go in for service but that’s a decent trade off.
There’s always another fuse you can pull to make that go away as well.
At this point just throw the car battery away.
How would the Toyota CEO not know about this? Weird. /s
Anyone know any good reference projects for building a ras pi based car stereo replacement?
You could, but you’re better off just making an insert for a tablet. It has music, GPS, cell service optional, easily replacable.
Car insurance is a scam.
Yeah, I’m fucking done with cars. Can’t afford em anyway.
I’ve wondered a bit about taking the head unit from my jeep and playing with the data it receives, like telling it I’m going 3MPH all night long, or telling it I’m going 600MPH. Ultimately though I’m just going to get rid of it and get something older.
I want it shut off. I like the safety sensors but those can be passive and not telemetric.
I want people who look in my cars computers to search for info to find NOTHING.
If you just want it off that can be done too, but it depends on the vehicle as to where the modem is. For my Jeep its behind the head unit and seems to be a major pain to get to, but really its just a couple pieces of trim and a headunit in the way.
The only reason I haven’t is because I want to just get rid of it and get something more basic.
Kit cars. Just have a car with basic sensors for safety and all that jazz and no computers or telemetry whatsoever. There is no law requiring them.
Black boxes on cars only record the last 5 seconds to account for what happened in a crash. I can live with that.
I can use a DAP or hand radio for entertainment. No need for the computerized system. I never used those anyway. For GPS I would either do paper maps or use a passive GPS that does not transmit.
