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Remove the antennas. Do not give in to the mirage of convenience. Use a stand alone generic GPS. Vehicle GPS devices are anti privacy for so many reasons. Lis

Remove the antennas. Do not give in to the mirage of convenience. Use a stand alone generic GPS. Vehicle GPS devices are anti privacy for so many reasons. Listen to stored music from an SD card if terrestrial radio (NO SATELLITE). Did you know almost ALL late model cars can play a <128gb FAT32 USB drive with non- vbr mp3s? 64gb filled with 168kb mp3 audio would take roughly 3 years at 4 hours a day to listen to. TURN YOUR PHONE OFF. Your phone does more than track you - the Bluetooth and wifi beacon scanners are always running. When you come across another person, most phones track the intersection of your beacon with theirs making a new data point that compromises both individuals privacy. Now consider sitting at a stoplight; you and and the 10 phones around you have now correlated the time and position you were sitting there. The person jogging by with no phone(but a set of Bluetooth headphones) is also tracked by their Bluetooth signature. Terrifying. Disable autonomous driving hardware by unplugging the cables from the interior cameras. If your car needs to see and feel you in order to do it's job, it's co-dependent; break up with it. Ignore your car's complaints and error messages. Did you know Orange dash error lights are non critical?

galleywest200 10mo ago
> Ignore your car's complaints and error messages. Did you know Orange dash error lights are non critical? "Tire pressure low" is one you should probably check out on a regular basis.
- chneu 10mo ago
  Yeah that's terrible advice. Learning to ignore safety warnings is an amazing way to wind up stranded or with a destroyed car because you decided to ignore a warning light
  - potato3732842 10mo ago
    The first 100yr of automobiles didn't have TPMS and it was mostly fine.
    - pixl97 10mo ago
      I mean if you consider that death rate per mile driven 'mostly fine'
      - SoftTalker 10mo ago
        Check your tire pressures when you get gas, along with your oil and other fluid levels. Eyeball the tires every time you get in the car. These habits are not hard to develop and they will work even when the sensors malfunction (which is not infrequently). All that these sensor-based systems do is train you to be an inattentive car owner.
        mindslight 10mo ago
        Throughout my entire life, I don't know if I have ever seen anyone measuring their tire pressure or checking their oil at a gas station. Visually assessing tires can be quite misleading as well - my TPMS indicator was just on, visually it looked like one tire (its pressure was fine), and the tire that was 10psi low looked normal. Falling back to an attitude of not needing automation and instrumentation is a cope, and often a poor cope at that. The problem isn't the dash warning lights of the past several decades, it's the built in corporate surveillance hardware of the past single decade (and the corresponding violation of user trust in favor of corporate control).
        everdrive 10mo ago
        >Falling back to an attitude of not needing automation and instrumentation is a cope, and often a poor cope at that. A lot of modern automation is not really automation. A washing machine is automation: it takes a task which would have wasted hours of your day and reduces it down to a few minutes. A lot of modern "automation" doesn't save you any actual time time, but just saves you from being attentive: - Checking your tire pressure doesn't take much time, but TPMS is a privacy problem and an added maintenance cost that you cannot opt out of. - A power rear lift gate actually takes _more_ time than just shutting it with your hands. - Power windows don't go down any more quickly than power windows. The only only benefit here is that you can open all 4 windows simultaneously. However this is a luxury, not something which saves you time. You never _need_ all 4 windows down. So maybe people like it, but it's not like the washing machine that actually saves you labor. - etc .... People think that needed to do or attend to anything is wasting time, but often modern automation saves no time whatsoever, and has other downsides. (privacy, maintenance cost, vehicle weight, etc.)
- sda2 10mo ago
  it may be better to code out TPMS anyways. I had a BMW that wouldn't allow you to enter Sport/Sport+ when TPMS light was on, what a drag.
  - cwmoore 10mo ago
    Does TPMS have any connection to BMW traction control?
    - harambae 10mo ago
      No it does not. There’s a wheel speed monitor sensor (that works via a magnet and little ridges… and is a pain to replace). That’s what the DTC (and probably ABS) uses
      - cwmoore 10mo ago
        Thanks for the answer. Safety shouldn’t be lame and repellent. TPMS, at ~400MHz, is a potentially valid input for traction control in certain cases, and potentially, a road quality and location signal as well. Once all the data is available, tested, analyzed, and applied, there isn’t going to be much left to do but smile, smile, smile.
- everdrive 10mo ago
  But in exchange for being tracked we've been saved from the scourge of occasionally checking our tire pressure. Why, I'd give up almost anything just to be slightly more comfortable.
gruez 10mo ago
>TURN YOUR PHONE OFF. Your phone does more than track you - the Bluetooth and wifi beacon scanners are always running. When you come across another person, most phones track the intersection of your beacon with theirs making a new data point that compromises both individuals privacy. Now consider sitting at a stoplight; you and and the 10 phones around you have now correlated the time and position you were sitting there. The person jogging by with no phone(but a set of Bluetooth headphones) is also tracked by their Bluetooth signature. Terrifying. All phones nowadays have bluetooth/wifi mac address randomization, so it's basically useless for tracking, not to mention google/apple conscripting every phone into a wardriving network will kill battery life. Moreover all this effort in avoiding being tracked doesn't really mean much when all cars have a very visible and unique identifier that's mandated by law (ie. license plate).
- alwa 10mo ago
  And Flock Safety will gladly fingerprint the vehicles without said license plate, and distribute everyone’s location histories nationally. See also (222 points, 19 comments, 14 days ago): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45945960 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45945960
- gattilorenz 10mo ago
  > All phones nowadays have bluetooth/wifi mac address randomization Source?
- tavavex 10mo ago
  > Moreover all this effort in avoiding being tracked doesn't really mean much when all cars have a very visible and unique identifier that's mandated by law (ie. license plate). I agree with the first half, but not this. The difference between people seeing your license plate and your car/phone/etc systematically recording and storing your exact position is the same as the difference between someone on the street seeing my face vs. a facial recognition camera identifying me and storing that data point forever. People don't memorize or care about your plates. The police could take note of them or even put it on some record, but the number of cops is so low (and the number of cops that would care about my license plates is even lower) that whatever scraps of data are recorded would probably be pretty useless - and besides, that data isn't sold off to private entities, at least where I am.
worldsavior 10mo ago
Ok stop with the panicking. What's wrong with GPS in vehicles? If it's not connected to the internet, there is no issue. What's wrong with playing music from the phone on Bluetooth or Aux? Did you also know you can ride a horse instead of a car? Bluetooth and WiFi isn't running if you turned them off. Bluetooth also isn't really used for tracking unless someone is looking for you or you're part of some service like AirTags. > Ignore your car's complaints and error messages. Did you know Orange dash error lights are non critical? What? Worse advice out there regarding cars.
- CamperBob2 10mo ago
  If it's not connected to the internet, there is no issue. It's connected to the Internet. Every car has a SIM card now.
  - gruez 10mo ago
    >It's connected to the Internet. Every car has a SIM card now. Maybe every new car, but the average car is 13 years old, and the OP made no clarification on whether his advice was for only new cars, or for a 2015 econobox as well.
    - everdrive 10mo ago
      Most people don't know, and will never know whether their car is connected to the internet, so it's better to assume it is unless you have specific information. The app or phone you connect to the car could also be a major exfil point of this data.
    - jeroenhd 10mo ago
      My car is older than that and came with an embedded SIM card. Quite a few navigation consoles had "live traffic updates" (often in trial format, but sometimes "lifetime") that basically consisted of 2G clients occasionally updating traffic data along planned routes. Not quite bottom of the line at the time, but also not uncommon at that point either. It's probably slightly worse than the dedicated satnav screens people were buying back when the car was new, although neither compares to what a smartphone will expose passively from just being inside of a moving car.
encom 10mo ago
>Do not give in to the mirage of convenience. I sympathise. However, being able to start de-icing my car while still in bed at 5:30 on a January morning is a powerful feature. And I'm the kind of person who wraps his tin foil hat no less than 10 layers thick. Ideally this shouldn't involve the internet, because the car is in wifi range, but what can I do about it?
- ryandrake 10mo ago
  People are suggesting all over these threads what we can do about it, but we (as a population) aren't. When my 2009 car dies, I'm going to deliberately NOT buy a new trackingmobile, and try to find another 2009 car to keep running. Yea, that means I occasionally need to take 30 seconds to scrape ice off the windshield. Big deal.
  - rcbdev 10mo ago
    Why 2009? I've been driving the same 2003 Audi TT all my life, never failed me.
    - wiredpancake 10mo ago
      [dead]
    - tavavex 10mo ago
      The number of cars from 2003 is already dwindling and it's only going to keep going down. It's certainly much easier to find cars from the late 00s-early 10s right now if your only priority is not being tracked or bound to a web of different digital services and subscriptions.
- m463 10mo ago
  I have this with my keyfob. later vehicles "helpfully" removed this in favor of online remote starting (with added telematics)
- AngryData 10mo ago
  You could probably get a 3rd party remote starter, however that is going to certainly cost you extra and probably won't be as simple as old school remote starters.
teeray 10mo ago
> Remove the antennas. Do not give in to the mirage of convenience. ERROR: unable to start engine.
- m463 10mo ago
  Please drink a verification can. Actually I wonder if cars will just adopt "oh-you-need-anti-theft" like phones do. To prevent auto theft, all cars will be tracked and all parts must match serial numbers.
  - Puzzled_Cheetah 10mo ago
    > To prevent auto theft, all cars will be tracked and all parts must match serial numbers. Well, I suppose that's one way to end third party repairs. Just refuse to turn on if the chip in the new part doesn't match up with a code in the ECU. Like printer ink, but for every major component. 'Error, cannot start engine: Authorised mirror not found. Please visit BMW for an authentic replacement. Driving with non-authentic mirrors may harm user safety.'
- rasz 10mo ago
  In case of Subaru its "we are sorry your battery died trying to aggressively reconnect to the mothership, no we wont be paying for the replacement"
jeroenhd 10mo ago
> Did you know Orange dash error lights are non critical? Your car will happily display an orange light while a bad fuel mixture is poisoning your catalytic converter to the point where it needs replacing to meet any kind of emissions test. Same with other signs of engine stress. Don't ignore dash lights unless you know what they mean or you're willing to pay the cost of disposing of your car. Of course many places won't even allow you to disconnect all the antennae as a non-functional TPMS makes your car unroadworthy in various jurisdictions. You could quickly reconnect everything and clear the error codes before testing, but I'm not sure if the hassle is even worth the illusion that of being untraceable.
reppap 10mo ago
No, I will use all this stuff and do so gladly.
mattmaroon 10mo ago
Yeah that’s great if you’re a CIA intelligence officer but what normal person can do this and still function in the modern world? Do the people who say this stuff leave their homes regularly? And what’s the benefit of it all? Fewer targeted ads?
- ranger_danger 10mo ago
  > Do the people who say this stuff leave their homes regularly? Nope.
- rTX5CMRXIfFG 10mo ago
  Leverage over your insurance provider sound good to you?
  - mattmaroon 10mo ago
    I am not sure how that works. I guessed I missed the technoparanoid discount. But I would value the time and inconvenience involved in this at more than my entire insurance bill.
owenversteeg 10mo ago
I like the rest of the comment, but... >Did you know Orange dash error lights are non critical? That's not even remotely true for most cars. One of the most critical alarms you can get in a car is a flashing check engine light, which are usually orange.
- harambae 10mo ago
  Those are usually red, although I don’t know if it’s actually SAE standard or not, I’ve only worked for one automotive company (and we made them red)
  - owenversteeg 10mo ago
    I’ve driven a lot of different cars around the world and nearly all check engine lights are orange. Almost all the Google image search results are orange. To be sure I checked the most popular ICE car models worldwide: Toyota Corolla, Toyota Rav4, Ford F-series, Honda CR-V, Chevrolet Silverado. All of those use orange. In fact, the only red CEL that I’ve ever seen is on Minis and BMWs - not the actual physical indicator (which is orange!) but the mini-LED screen warnings.
    - harambae 10mo ago
      Ah, interesting! Yeah I worked for BMW (which owns Mini Cooper now). Guess my experience was not universal.

galleywest200 10mo ago

> Ignore your car's complaints and error messages. Did you know Orange dash error lights are non critical? "Tire pressure low" is one you should probably check out on a regular basis.

chneu 10mo ago
Yeah that's terrible advice. Learning to ignore safety warnings is an amazing way to wind up stranded or with a destroyed car because you decided to ignore a warning light
- potato3732842 10mo ago
  The first 100yr of automobiles didn't have TPMS and it was mostly fine.
  - pixl97 10mo ago
    I mean if you consider that death rate per mile driven 'mostly fine'
    - SoftTalker 10mo ago
      Check your tire pressures when you get gas, along with your oil and other fluid levels. Eyeball the tires every time you get in the car. These habits are not hard to develop and they will work even when the sensors malfunction (which is not infrequently). All that these sensor-based systems do is train you to be an inattentive car owner.
      - mindslight 10mo ago
        Throughout my entire life, I don't know if I have ever seen anyone measuring their tire pressure or checking their oil at a gas station. Visually assessing tires can be quite misleading as well - my TPMS indicator was just on, visually it looked like one tire (its pressure was fine), and the tire that was 10psi low looked normal. Falling back to an attitude of not needing automation and instrumentation is a cope, and often a poor cope at that. The problem isn't the dash warning lights of the past several decades, it's the built in corporate surveillance hardware of the past single decade (and the corresponding violation of user trust in favor of corporate control).
        everdrive 10mo ago
        >Falling back to an attitude of not needing automation and instrumentation is a cope, and often a poor cope at that. A lot of modern automation is not really automation. A washing machine is automation: it takes a task which would have wasted hours of your day and reduces it down to a few minutes. A lot of modern "automation" doesn't save you any actual time time, but just saves you from being attentive: - Checking your tire pressure doesn't take much time, but TPMS is a privacy problem and an added maintenance cost that you cannot opt out of. - A power rear lift gate actually takes _more_ time than just shutting it with your hands. - Power windows don't go down any more quickly than power windows. The only only benefit here is that you can open all 4 windows simultaneously. However this is a luxury, not something which saves you time. You never _need_ all 4 windows down. So maybe people like it, but it's not like the washing machine that actually saves you labor. - etc .... People think that needed to do or attend to anything is wasting time, but often modern automation saves no time whatsoever, and has other downsides. (privacy, maintenance cost, vehicle weight, etc.)
sda2 10mo ago
it may be better to code out TPMS anyways. I had a BMW that wouldn't allow you to enter Sport/Sport+ when TPMS light was on, what a drag.
- cwmoore 10mo ago
  Does TPMS have any connection to BMW traction control?
  - harambae 10mo ago
    No it does not. There’s a wheel speed monitor sensor (that works via a magnet and little ridges… and is a pain to replace). That’s what the DTC (and probably ABS) uses
    - cwmoore 10mo ago
      Thanks for the answer. Safety shouldn’t be lame and repellent. TPMS, at ~400MHz, is a potentially valid input for traction control in certain cases, and potentially, a road quality and location signal as well. Once all the data is available, tested, analyzed, and applied, there isn’t going to be much left to do but smile, smile, smile.
everdrive 10mo ago
But in exchange for being tracked we've been saved from the scourge of occasionally checking our tire pressure. Why, I'd give up almost anything just to be slightly more comfortable.

gruez 10mo ago

>TURN YOUR PHONE OFF. Your phone does more than track you - the Bluetooth and wifi beacon scanners are always running. When you come across another person, most phones track the intersection of your beacon with theirs making a new data point that compromises both individuals privacy. Now consider sitting at a stoplight; you and and the 10 phones around you have now correlated the time and position you were sitting there. The person jogging by with no phone(but a set of Bluetooth headphones) is also tracked by their Bluetooth signature. Terrifying. All phones nowadays have bluetooth/wifi mac address randomization, so it's basically useless for tracking, not to mention google/apple conscripting every phone into a wardriving network will kill battery life. Moreover all this effort in avoiding being tracked doesn't really mean much when all cars have a very visible and unique identifier that's mandated by law (ie. license plate).

alwa 10mo ago
And Flock Safety will gladly fingerprint the vehicles without said license plate, and distribute everyone’s location histories nationally. See also (222 points, 19 comments, 14 days ago): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45945960 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45945960
gattilorenz 10mo ago
> All phones nowadays have bluetooth/wifi mac address randomization Source?
tavavex 10mo ago
> Moreover all this effort in avoiding being tracked doesn't really mean much when all cars have a very visible and unique identifier that's mandated by law (ie. license plate). I agree with the first half, but not this. The difference between people seeing your license plate and your car/phone/etc systematically recording and storing your exact position is the same as the difference between someone on the street seeing my face vs. a facial recognition camera identifying me and storing that data point forever. People don't memorize or care about your plates. The police could take note of them or even put it on some record, but the number of cops is so low (and the number of cops that would care about my license plates is even lower) that whatever scraps of data are recorded would probably be pretty useless - and besides, that data isn't sold off to private entities, at least where I am.

worldsavior 10mo ago

Ok stop with the panicking. What's wrong with GPS in vehicles? If it's not connected to the internet, there is no issue. What's wrong with playing music from the phone on Bluetooth or Aux? Did you also know you can ride a horse instead of a car? Bluetooth and WiFi isn't running if you turned them off. Bluetooth also isn't really used for tracking unless someone is looking for you or you're part of some service like AirTags. > Ignore your car's complaints and error messages. Did you know Orange dash error lights are non critical? What? Worse advice out there regarding cars.

CamperBob2 10mo ago
If it's not connected to the internet, there is no issue. It's connected to the Internet. Every car has a SIM card now.
- gruez 10mo ago
  >It's connected to the Internet. Every car has a SIM card now. Maybe every new car, but the average car is 13 years old, and the OP made no clarification on whether his advice was for only new cars, or for a 2015 econobox as well.
  - everdrive 10mo ago
    Most people don't know, and will never know whether their car is connected to the internet, so it's better to assume it is unless you have specific information. The app or phone you connect to the car could also be a major exfil point of this data.
  - jeroenhd 10mo ago
    My car is older than that and came with an embedded SIM card. Quite a few navigation consoles had "live traffic updates" (often in trial format, but sometimes "lifetime") that basically consisted of 2G clients occasionally updating traffic data along planned routes. Not quite bottom of the line at the time, but also not uncommon at that point either. It's probably slightly worse than the dedicated satnav screens people were buying back when the car was new, although neither compares to what a smartphone will expose passively from just being inside of a moving car.

encom 10mo ago

>Do not give in to the mirage of convenience. I sympathise. However, being able to start de-icing my car while still in bed at 5:30 on a January morning is a powerful feature. And I'm the kind of person who wraps his tin foil hat no less than 10 layers thick. Ideally this shouldn't involve the internet, because the car is in wifi range, but what can I do about it?

ryandrake 10mo ago
People are suggesting all over these threads what we can do about it, but we (as a population) aren't. When my 2009 car dies, I'm going to deliberately NOT buy a new trackingmobile, and try to find another 2009 car to keep running. Yea, that means I occasionally need to take 30 seconds to scrape ice off the windshield. Big deal.
- rcbdev 10mo ago
  Why 2009? I've been driving the same 2003 Audi TT all my life, never failed me.
  - wiredpancake 10mo ago
    [dead]
  - tavavex 10mo ago
    The number of cars from 2003 is already dwindling and it's only going to keep going down. It's certainly much easier to find cars from the late 00s-early 10s right now if your only priority is not being tracked or bound to a web of different digital services and subscriptions.
m463 10mo ago
I have this with my keyfob. later vehicles "helpfully" removed this in favor of online remote starting (with added telematics)
AngryData 10mo ago
You could probably get a 3rd party remote starter, however that is going to certainly cost you extra and probably won't be as simple as old school remote starters.

teeray 10mo ago

> Remove the antennas. Do not give in to the mirage of convenience. ERROR: unable to start engine.

m463 10mo ago
Please drink a verification can. Actually I wonder if cars will just adopt "oh-you-need-anti-theft" like phones do. To prevent auto theft, all cars will be tracked and all parts must match serial numbers.
- Puzzled_Cheetah 10mo ago
  > To prevent auto theft, all cars will be tracked and all parts must match serial numbers. Well, I suppose that's one way to end third party repairs. Just refuse to turn on if the chip in the new part doesn't match up with a code in the ECU. Like printer ink, but for every major component. 'Error, cannot start engine: Authorised mirror not found. Please visit BMW for an authentic replacement. Driving with non-authentic mirrors may harm user safety.'
rasz 10mo ago
In case of Subaru its "we are sorry your battery died trying to aggressively reconnect to the mothership, no we wont be paying for the replacement"

jeroenhd 10mo ago

> Did you know Orange dash error lights are non critical? Your car will happily display an orange light while a bad fuel mixture is poisoning your catalytic converter to the point where it needs replacing to meet any kind of emissions test. Same with other signs of engine stress. Don't ignore dash lights unless you know what they mean or you're willing to pay the cost of disposing of your car. Of course many places won't even allow you to disconnect all the antennae as a non-functional TPMS makes your car unroadworthy in various jurisdictions. You could quickly reconnect everything and clear the error codes before testing, but I'm not sure if the hassle is even worth the illusion that of being untraceable.

reppap 10mo ago

No, I will use all this stuff and do so gladly.

mattmaroon 10mo ago

Yeah that’s great if you’re a CIA intelligence officer but what normal person can do this and still function in the modern world? Do the people who say this stuff leave their homes regularly? And what’s the benefit of it all? Fewer targeted ads?

ranger_danger 10mo ago
> Do the people who say this stuff leave their homes regularly? Nope.
rTX5CMRXIfFG 10mo ago
Leverage over your insurance provider sound good to you?
- mattmaroon 10mo ago
  I am not sure how that works. I guessed I missed the technoparanoid discount. But I would value the time and inconvenience involved in this at more than my entire insurance bill.

owenversteeg 10mo ago

I like the rest of the comment, but... >Did you know Orange dash error lights are non critical? That's not even remotely true for most cars. One of the most critical alarms you can get in a car is a flashing check engine light, which are usually orange.

harambae 10mo ago
Those are usually red, although I don’t know if it’s actually SAE standard or not, I’ve only worked for one automotive company (and we made them red)
- owenversteeg 10mo ago
  I’ve driven a lot of different cars around the world and nearly all check engine lights are orange. Almost all the Google image search results are orange. To be sure I checked the most popular ICE car models worldwide: Toyota Corolla, Toyota Rav4, Ford F-series, Honda CR-V, Chevrolet Silverado. All of those use orange. In fact, the only red CEL that I’ve ever seen is on Minis and BMWs - not the actual physical indicator (which is orange!) but the mini-LED screen warnings.
  - harambae 10mo ago
    Ah, interesting! Yeah I worked for BMW (which owns Mini Cooper now). Guess my experience was not universal.