New research reveals serious privacy flaws in the data practices of new internet connected cars in Australia. It’s yet another reason why we need urgent reform of privacy laws.
Modern cars are increasingly equipped with internet-enabled features. Your “connected car” might automatically detect an accident and call emergency services, or send a notification if a child is left in the back seat.
But connected cars are also sophisticated surveillance devices. The data they collect can create a highly revealing picture of each driver. If this data is misused, it can result in privacy and security threats.
A report published today analysed the privacy terms from 15 of the most popular new car brands that sell connected cars in Australia.
I mean if you’re mechanically talented enough and sufficiently motivated, you could probably rip out the digital controls and replace them with mechanical analogs, getting rid of the computer entirely. Extremely difficult, but probably doable if you know what you’re doing.
That aside, we shouldn’t have to do that to get out of being spied on.
Or just disable the cell modem.
The more we electrify our cars, the less feasible this is.
Decoding and sending messages to mechanical systems over the CANBUS is one thing (still difficult, but possible), but taking control over system software is another. In the us, consumers are supposed to have the right to repair their personal vehicles, but a lot of that law was established back when you could do work on a vehicle without having access to digitally protected copyright. We might have a right to repair, but that’s starting to clash against their copyrights over their IP and software controls.
And that’s not even getting into their eagerness to utilize subscription models - would a court side with a consumer if they decided they wanted to circumvent DRM controls over subscription-controlled car features (a car that they own outright)? It’s unclear to me that right to repair or consumer protections have been written in a way to accommodate those conflicts… Especially when cars are subject to far higher safety regulations than computers - a manufacturer could argue that they need to prevent consumers from tampering with their software systems for their own safety.
If you still own a ‘dumb’ car without one of these systems, it’s really not a bad idea to hold onto them for as long as possible. You can always upgrade them if you want to - some people have even replaced ICE transmissions with electric ones. But once you own one of these cars with software-controlled systems, it’s far harder to strip them out. Especially once they start requiring cellular connection to operate or function (or require connections to privately-owned satellite constellations…)
Toyota at least has an opt-out website. (Or at least in the US they do). You lose the ability to do stuff like remote start from your phone though. And emergency roadside service, blah blah blah. I turned off all the mapping saved route stuff immediately that let you see your previous trip average miles/KW and then turned off everything once they wanted me to pay a monthly fee for remote start and such.
Theres still an LTE modem in your car sending data somewhere
So if I were to take one of them cars and drive out to the middle of nowhere in the desert where there’s no cell service, what’s it gonna do? Shut off once it’s roaming? Not start back up and strand me in 115° heat? I just want to be prepared for my lawsuit that’s all
It’ll just cache telemetry locally then send it in when you reconnect to the network
I seriously doubt they’re not capturing the information just because you told them not to. They’re just going to treat it differently. But have no delusions that they’re respecting your wishes as you think they should.
What’s ridiculous is they made remote start only available from the app instead of a keyfob
First thing I did when buying my '21 Toyota was remove the fuse giving power to the cellular modem. Is it still recording my data? Of course, but that’s only a worry if I go to their dealership for service. If I ever need to actually do that (recalls for example) I’ll remove the DCM module from the vehicle before bringing it in. There’s a very good local shop near me that I’ll bring it to for normal maintenance before letting Toyota plug in to the car and download my data.
Some vehicles this may not be possible, so if this concerns you, check forums about your vehicle if it is a moving spy machine before trying this because you might end up causing the vehicle to be put in limp mode because of some BS design choices.
I am consistently disappointed to see the top posts say to not buy a car whenever news like this comes out.
Your post at least provides an alternative.
Which fuse? And links to a guide?
Pretty simple, there’s a fuse in the fuse box under the dash labeled DCM, just remove it. It’s extremely simple and takes 3 minutes. The DCM has an 18650 backup battery so it’ll stay powered for a short time but should die in a day or two and stop transmitting.
I’ll remove the DCM module from the vehicle before bringing it in.
Why don’t you remove it right now then?
Haven’t had the time to tear the dash apart. It’s located below the infotainment screen. It’s not transmitting so no need for immediate action.
Even if your vehicle isn’t watching you, your phone is
What is your point here?
Just what I said. Your phone is watching you and listening to you. If you are driving with it on you are being tracked as well
Not if you install a custom rom like graphene os. Or turn off all privacy invasive features in the settings.
Am using vanilla android 14 and have disable as much tracking software as I can find in it. I truly believe there is tracking code embedded in the os. But since I still owe on this phone from my service I’m not real comfortable rooting and flashing it right now. Looked at a couple "topten list"s of available Roms and the grapheneos was advertised as pixel only. My samsung doesnt fit so…
I like minimalist stuff anyway so went to download the OmniRom but was warned it “may not be compatible with your device” and was prevented from downloading. Just have to wait till this one is paid off before dinking around with it.
Yeah I have a samsung too it sucks that they have basicly no suport for custom roms unless you go with something really old like the galaxy s10.
I find it hard to believe that Google phones wouldn’t have a hardware±SIM backdoor no matter what ROM is installed.
This technology already was in place on Intel ME desktops using a operating system on a chip called MINIX
That and phones far exceed surveillance perfection and device count vs PC.
Anything not RISCV and with a binary blob is a vector.
You may or may not be right but it’s still very beneficial to install a custom rom or disable as many privacy invasive settings as possible because it will definitely at least significantly limit the amount of data google gets and its definitely better than giving up and doing nothing.
I honestly believe that Google doesn’t have any back-door into your device anyway.
The point is people hyper focus on one thing while completely disregarding / forgetting something that as bad or worse.
Not my phone. I dont run spyware on it
You can turn off your phone at least sometimes. :) But this of course does not solve the problem.
The car has its own power generation though so it can do a lot more without risk of killing the battery. They can record and stream the whole time you use it.
It’s also why repair costs an arm and a leg.
It used to be a bumper was just filled with foam, so getting in a fender bender was a pretty cheap fix.
Now a bumper has upwards of $5000 in technology and sensors sitting in it, and a fender bender can often make the car considered “totaled” because the cost to repair is now more than the total resale value of the car.
Get a bike, ride a bus, fuck surveillance capitalism.
The surveillance is mostly done on the inside of the car, not the outside. Parking sensors don’t really provide useful data for them to harvest, but that is why they cost so much to replace. If you don’t care about parking sensors you can just replace your bumper without them, the car doesn’t really care after you tell it “you didn’t ship with parking sensors”.
YES
Best part is it’s $5000 because they get to name their price. These sensors, headlights, etc, cost nowhere near that, but where else are you gonna go get em?
So in a few years when your new car has depreciated to somewhere around 10k and you get a massive repair bill? Well most people are scrapping if and getting another car, convenient for them
Opting out still seems like they’re pinkie promising they won’t spy on you. There’s no guarantee they’re not using all those sensors on your car to keep tabs on you. The only thing they can’t do is sell your data without getting caught. Are there any guides to install a faraday cage on the telemetry antenna? I miss having dumb cheap vehicles.
I have never seen an opt-out work as it should. Operating systems just re-enable everything through system updates. Apps do it through app updates. A lot of updates seem like they’re for nothing other than getting you to agree to a new more intrusive ToS. For websites, spam lists, and that sort of shit, they just create a new mailer program and opt you into that. Sure, they’re not sending you the one you opted out of, but there are 500 more on the back burner. Some of the worst offenders will have dozens or even hundreds of different lists and force you to opt out of each one individually. Then of course there are the spammers who just don’t even capture the opt out. Or put the opt out behind a login that you don’t even have. Or serve the opt out page through an ad-click network which is blocked by your filter list, firewall, ad blocker, or DNS. There are a hundred ways they circumvent the laws and legislators are doing nothing to stop them.
I just pulled the fuse for my vehicles modem once Mozilla released their report earlier this year or last year.
I think the best course of action is to find an cut the antenna or it’s trace on the board (and verify). Sounds a lot easier than it is though.
edit: or also pull the modem fuse, if it has one
From a cursory examination, it looks like there are at least some models where you can disconnect the antenna, for which you may get a warning you can just ignore. Seems a lot easier than a faraday cage. But a lot worse than a car not outfitted with that kind of tech.
Is there any open source/privacy focused connected car software?
The problem isn’t e.g. CarPlay, it’s the car itself, which is usually entirely custom.
For example with Infiniti they have their own Android based OS and the only way to get a new head unit in the car is to have a full emulator. Otherwise you lose access to anything that the head unit controls.
I don’t know if open source custom car roms will be a thing until we have an LLM that’s smart enough to automate porting the rom to different models of car.
Yeah OK, so stick with dumb cars for now. Or take public transport and ride your bike because cars just suck in general!
Definitely. If you’ve got an old car keep it alive as long as you can
There are some open source cars, but they’re very basic
I once had a conversation with AI to see what the fastest form of transportation is, that didn’t absolutely require paying any kind of insurance, like cars do. I did not expect the response at all: the AI told me horseback riding. The thing is, it’s completely right, but it’s something no human would ever have given as a response. Anyways, if anyone has a horse you don’t want…
The AI was doing that meme
“Humans have horses. Don’t ride them. Are they stupid?”
Horse Outside by the Rubber Bandits
An eBike would be faster, and way easier to maintain and store. They don’t require insurance.
Horses can run between 25-30 MPH, a class 3 e-bike caps out at 28 MPH. So, they’re about the same.
Also, horse is bigger/more visible to cars, and maybe could be in the street. So you may not have to wait on traffic crossings as much depending on the area.
I still choose e-bike because poo, but what a looney idea, I love it.
Just superglue a neodymium magnet to the bottom of your bike shoe and hover it over the sensor lines in front of the stop light.
That’s why I’ll take bus, train, rideshare, carshare, plane with all the cameras and tracking over buying a new personal vehicle. Modern cars can build a personal digital profile of you, they know where you travel, they track your plate, and we found out they track your driving behaviour to screw with your insurance rates.
Also consider getting an ebike, if possible.
In fact, I have one! And for its size (20-inch wheels and foldable) it can fit a lot!
E-bike
Nice, that looks legit.
New report Mozilla said this a year ago I think. Released a privacy report on all car manufactures.
Mozilla Foundation did a deep dive into this. And the results where abysmal. The only brands not completely horrifying where Renault/Dacia because they are European and only serve the European market so they have to follow GDPR.
I am less interested in ranking them based on what they do (because we can assume they just vacuum up everything anyway), and more in a ranking based on how easy the surveillance is to remove. Apparently for some cars the telematics module can be easily unplugged at least, losing you some non-critical functionality, but on others it may be integrated tighter.
Any company that serves European customers have to follow GDPR. Any company that breaks it can be fined by the EU. Hence why a bunch of American websites rather just block European browsers instead of changing their cookie/data retention policies.
A few years ago, when I cared little about my privacy, I would fancy buying a new car. Thanks to privacy concerns, I became proud to have my old car, which also happens to be highly repairable.
Yep, I have my 2004 landcruiser. I will never get rid of this car
No shit , this just in said anyone in security.
This is why when I get my driver’s license, I’ll buy a car from 2012 that has no Internet.
9th Gen Civic
1.8 or 2.4L, no turbo, tons of manual transmissions out there, cheap to fix, easy to find and source with tons of motors still in crates brand new.
Skodas, VWs, and other French and Spanish are more common than Hondas in country where I live.
Unfortunately, many of the cars transmit the surveillance data through phone carrier data lines, using an embedded SIM card. So, sadly I don’t think this would help very much.
If it’s not helpful to the operation of the vehicle, then you can just wrap it in a Faraday cage. Oops no signal.
Yeah I have a 2012 vehicle, doesn’t even have built in Bluetooth. I love it.
yep. I just with some car company would choose not to do this and advertise the fuck out of it. (looking at you Chrysler you have nothing to lose)
They still have the Pacifica…
uhm, the pacifica doesn’t fit this description (source, worked at FCA on this kind of stuff and we put it in the pacifica).
The Dodge Grand Carvan, which was basically unchanged from '08-'19 on the otherhand…
Sell me a dumb car.
