I want to buy a new car, but it needs to be privacy friendly. Sadly you cannot really buy any new Car that is.
Has anybody any experience on making your modern car not phone home to its company, by removing the hardware it uses to do?
It’s entirely dependent on what car you buy, they’re all different. On some cars it’s integral to the ECU or some other component. On other cars like my Subaru it’s a box you just remove, then you’ll need a custom harness to make the speaker audio work again.
Without saying what car it is nobody can help you without saying “just unplug it”.
Looks like you should start a guide because you know a lot more than me
I thought about a Hyundai i20N. If it is not possible i am just buying a BMW e36 or e46
I know nothing about the i20 since we don’t get it here, but looks like on Hyundais you’ll most likely have to pull the entire factory radio and replace it with an aftermarket one. I believe on my friends Veloster it was a distinct module, but that one was 2g only and since 2g is dead it’s not really doing much.
Maybe if you’re lucky and it’s like my Subaru you can pull the radio, find that BlueLink is it’s own distinct module and just remove it. You’ll most likely have the same issue as me where your speakers and mic won’t work unless you build a custom adapter. I didn’t build my own adapter I found a guy online who does radio harnesses for aftermarket radios and he made a basic adapter for like $20, and a fancy one that lets my mic work for like $100.
And some cars have it built into things like the head unit/heater control/mapping, does everything box.
Speaking as someone who worked for a corporate auto maker, it won’t be an easy task since they try to make it as difficult as possible to disable online activation if even providing the ability at all.
The only real solution is pulling the head unit and trying to find any modem and desolder it, which who knows if it would function as it had before hand since everything is integrated.
It will also hurt resale value.
When I worked on auto-maker on the head units, they were integrated on the chip, the ones that had a sim slot where you can insert and extract it were the ones for development. Recent cars, their GPS and screen media menus uses the Linux inside the modem chip.
Sounds a lot like a smartphone where one SoC chip does pretty much everything… CPU, cell modem, WiFi, USB host/device switching, quick charge, the whole lot 😢
Black box tracking device. Just like Intel Management Engine, AMT and Microsoft Pluton! Proprietary Blobs. You don’t own your device.
Unless you get an expensive car, I think they do that to reduce expenses. Expensive cars have dedicated CPU for that, but they still communicate with the head unit for online data.
Or just put a power test attentuator on the antenna output.
It essentially absorbs the RF from the antenna and radiates it as heat. Since cell is pretty low power (1/2 watt max, IIRC), and a cell radio will stop trying to transmit after a while (though it will try again), I don’t think it would cause any problems.
But I’m not an RF engineer.
The newer cars from the company I worked for were always trying to phone home, not sure about other companies but this one was trying to lock you into the online ecosystem.
I have a strong suspicion that Sirius XM is some form of government mandated mass surveillance hardware. There’s absolutely no other explanation that every car manufacturer just includes that garbage as a standard equipment that you just can not opt out of.
These auto manufacturers will nickel and dime you for smallest things like rubber mats they expect us to believe that piece of shit like Sirius XM is included out of kindness of their heart.
Sirius pays them. You’re more likely to subscribe if your car already has the radio. Same reason your shitty Walmart laptop comes with McAfee.
Buy an older car and spend the extra money on replacing and upgrading components.
We need guides on how to do this for all cars
If you plan to get a GM vehicle, from what I’ve seen. Most OnStar modules are right behind the infotainment screen. However, if you remove that, you lose your microphone.
You might want to read this
https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/categories/cars/
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
Don’t use a jamming device that’d be effective, wrong and illegal
deleted by creator
Mmm. Horse lasagna.
