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Posted by arkadiyt 19 hours ago

Removing the modem and GPS from my 2024 RAV4 hybrid(arkadiyt.com)
903 points | 467 commentspage 2
a-dub 17 hours ago|
> Strong Federal privacy laws would make posts like this unnecessary, that’s the world I’d rather live in.

yes. there ought to be a right to reasonable expectation of behavioral privacy where if it's not obvious and intrinsic to function that behavior is being recorded then it must be consented with functional opt-out.

gps tracking to the manufacturer of a car seems egregious. i wonder if it runs afoul of anti-stalking laws.

cbdevidal 16 hours ago||
I was looking into this with Teslas. Apparently the car will not be bricked if you cut the antenna wires. They are in the side mirrors (both sides) and the wires are exposed when you pull the interior door panels.

If you then charge only at home you’re even more private than gas cars, which must stop at gas stations with cameras.

But both types of vehicles are easily spotted with Flock cameras. And if you keep your phone on that tracks you, too.

I’m not that paranoid so I won’t do it, I just wanted to know.

pfp 3 hours ago||
I tried looking into this too but couldn't get further than some reddit bickering and a handful of forum posts. Not a Tesla owner myself but might want to be if the privacy issues can be fixed.

Ideally I'd like to keep my cake and eat it: keep navigation (preferably offline), spotify, etc. working but disable the telemetry, remote control, etc. From what I could gather, Teslas can use Wifi (your phone's hotspot) as a backup uplink. So depending on how they've implemented the cloud features, after disconnecting the antennae, you might be able to set up a tiny router and whitelist certain DNS queries, HTTPs connections, etc. But it might also be that they just use a big ol' VPN tunnel to the mothership and pipe all the cloud features through it.

Slightly less ambitious: does the navigation in Teslas work offline? Offline maps and route calculation have been around since the 00's in standalone GPS navigators, so it's not impossible.

left-struck 13 hours ago|||
>Gas stations with cameras.

Everything has cameras these days. On my street almost every house has a cloud connected camera. Every major road has cameras, every store and business. Now I’m not suggesting we give up the fight for privacy but avoiding gas stations does nothing

cbdevidal 3 hours ago|||
That’s specifically why I said ”Flock cameras”. Also mentioned our phones, they also report our location.

I suspect soon cameras in other cars will also be reporting our whereabouts.

Absolute privacy is almost impossible on public roads.

asdff 13 hours ago|||
Difference is most of those things you mention overwrite their data in a few days or weeks. Even doorbell cameras, no one's stuff is being stored indefinitely.
HDBaseT 12 hours ago||
How do you know?

Most of these are cloud connected, how do you know they aren't storing license plate information, or face data, or audio data for extended periods of time in the cloud?

Arch-TK 12 hours ago|||
Are you implying that we shouldn't be annoyed at Flock and forced GPS tracking in cars because my ignorant neighbours have a cloud connected doorbell?

Because I am instead annoyed at all three.

Not necessarily my neighbours, but the companies selling this spyware.

HDBaseT 12 hours ago||
That is not what I'm suggesting at all, what?
asdff 12 hours ago|||
Nothing comes for free, so what's the profit angle to do this? Government is the obvious customer, but that would leave a papertrail too if such deals were worked out especially asking for perpetual storage until the heat death of the universe.
HDBaseT 12 hours ago||
The cost comes from your tax. Surveillance has an unlimited budget.

You can store an ungodly amount of data if you convert everything to metadata, e.g store a face picture for a short period of time, create a hash to match against other faces in the database. Same with license plates.

Using the metadata alone could effectively completely track your whereabouts.

dreamcompiler 9 hours ago|||
> the car will not be bricked if you cut the antenna wires

They can't brick cars with bad antennas. They have to allow for cars that drive into tunnels or that are used in areas with no cell service.

They could choose to throw up increasingly annoying messages if the car hasn't phoned home for some time. Tesla does this if you haven't updated your software in a while but the screens are pretty easy to close and ignore.

HDBaseT 12 hours ago||
If you think your Tesla is somehow more "private" then my pre-2010's ICE car with no tracking electronics, then you are delusional.
cbdevidal 4 hours ago||
With no antennas, can a Tesla transmit anything at all?

BTW I don’t own a Tesla. My car is like yours, a pre-2010 gas minivan with zero tracking.

Our phones and roadside Flock cameras still rat out both kinds of vehicles. I suspect soon cameras in other cars will also be reporting our whereabouts.

Absolute privacy is almost impossible on public roads.

venussnatch 19 hours ago||
What is the suspected method of Bluetooth communication?

Afaik phones do not share their internet blindly to Bluetooth devices.

jeroenhd 18 hours ago||
Bluetooth PAN seems to work pretty seamlessly once you've paired your phone and set it up. It's possible some kind of "seamless hotspot" functionality is remotely activating PAN on a paired device.
max8539 18 hours ago||
Also thought about it. It’s possible, but requires enabling hotspot on the phone. Without it, it will not share internet via BT.
buran77 18 hours ago|||
The author probably means CarPlay and Android Auto. In wireless mode they share the phone's internet connection. The adapter linked in the article is a CarPlay adapter, not plain BT.
max8539 18 hours ago|||
Seems like this way of using CarPlay isn’t documented. Bluetooth is used for discovery and WiFi/USB for CarPlay communication but not for providing car and internet access. Using users’ phone data without notice could be noticeable by users as well…
icehawk 11 hours ago|||
That doesn't seem right at all, since my phone doesn't have tethering plan and I can still use CarPlay.
fragmede 18 hours ago|||
It would also require that my phone not show my car using the hotspot, when it does show my laptop, and also for my cellphone plan to not show that usage (I have limited hotspot data), which is theoretically possible, but now we're talking three companies having to collude in a totally undetectable fashion, which seems a little far fetched.
ezfe 18 hours ago||
> Even after the modem is removed, if you connect your phone to the car via Bluetooth then the car will use your phone as an internet connection and send all the same telemetry data back to Toyota

What is the basis for this claim? I've never heard of this capability.

arkadiyt 17 hours ago|
It's from the linked rav4world post
ezfe 16 hours ago|||
> One caveat, if you use bluetooth to connect your phone to the car DCM will use your phone to connect to the mother ship and presumably send your data. I only use my iPhone cable to connect to the car which does not have this effect.

A random post on a forum is not evidence that Toyota has found a magic way to exfiltrate data over a bluetooth connection without turning on hotspot/etc.

tadfisher 16 hours ago|||
It's not evidence against it either. Presumably CarPlay and Android Auto could implement a network interface through the application layer, or even activate Bluetooth tethering at the system level as they are privileged apps.

But they could also do this over USB, so something doesn't add up.

rightbyte 4 hours ago||||
If the car manufacturer got control of an app on the phone it is trivial to exfiltrate data via Bluetooth.
throwway120385 14 hours ago|||
RNDIS was a mechanism for tethering over USB, and you could certainly pair "Bluetooth Network Adapters" for years and there's a profile for it. So there's at least precedent for it. That makes it pretty plausible to me.
venussnatch 17 hours ago|||
There's no basis mentioned there either. It's just stated as a matter of fact without explanation.
mono442 17 hours ago||
Modern cars are horrible. I recently discovered that all new cars sold in the EU constantly beep at you for supposedly speeding, even though the system doesn’t work well, and it has to be turned off every time you start the car.
ricardobeat 14 hours ago||
They beep when you go above the speed limit, and only for a couple seconds. If they do that 'constantly' the problem is in the driver's seat...

It takes two seconds to turn off in my car (though by law it has to reset on every drive), but I never bother. In situations where it's "ok" to drive a little over the limit, it's a small price to pay and a gentle reminder.

orloffm 2 hours ago|||
I've rented an Audi in Germany. On autobahns with 140 km/h speed limits there are lots of signs that limit speed to some low values like 50 km/h, but only under some conditions like snow, darkness, workday morning etc. Of course the car had no idea about those, started beeping for no reason and once even decided to do an emergency brake.
egorfine 3 hours ago||||
> They beep when you go above the speed limit, and only for a couple seconds.

No. They beep when they think I go above the speed limit.

Technically it is wrong 100% of time because the car underreports the speed. But even if we agree to ignore that fact, it is still wrong constantly because the car doesn't have nearly enough sensors and compute power to actually figure out what's the limit at the moment.

Thus this feature is as useful as cookie banners.

aniviacat 13 hours ago||||
The car probably doesn't have perfect knowledge of speed limits across Europe.
phpnode 13 hours ago|||
The car reads the speed limit signs too, they don't just rely on GPS.
bean469 4 hours ago|||
In some countries the speed limit can change without a explicit sign (speed limits cancelling out at intersections / changes in pavement, etc.). In my experience, in multiple instances the systems offered a speed limit that is higher than the actual one, which can be dangerous if you're just blindly trusting the clanker
crimsontech 11 hours ago||||
The signs also seem to take priority over GPS, I was on a road with a 50mph speed limit tonight and the car read something it thought was a 20mph speed limit sign. I have the beeps disabled but it still displays the red 20mph sign on the dash to let me know it thinks I'm breaking the law.
icehawk 10 hours ago|||
from the last rental I had, they're not good at that.
Affric 13 hours ago|||
Why wouldn’t they?

Dataset is readily available for most places. Pull local on entry to jurisdiction on every drive…

arcanemachiner 13 hours ago||
Have you ever actually worked with geodata in depth? It's a wall-to-wall nightmare.
Affric 10 hours ago||
Never for production at scale admittedly, only for research and on fixed line connections, mostly public transport related. Some datasets are better than others.

Internet connected options here in Australia generally have good speed limit data but there are generally very few variable speed limits that allow you to travel faster than usual.

Transition is never perfect but surely regulation would account for that?

I genuinely don’t know but to me it’s an interesting problem.

HDBaseT 12 hours ago|||
Lick the boot more.

If you can't drive into a tree at 200mph and kill yourself in a car, then I do not what it.

retired 16 hours ago|||
It’s horrible since it gets the speed wrong 25% of the time and 25% of the time it beeps because you are doing 33 in a 30kmh zone because you are just going along with traffic.

When you get in a car, you have to spend 20 seconds disabling all those systems. Lane keep assist is downright dangerous as it keeps you in your lane if you do an emergency avoidance manoeuvre.

I don’t hate safety system like emergency brake assist or ABS but I don’t need a nanny keeping me in my lane. I also don’t need a coffee symbol for taking a break.

trinix912 15 hours ago||
My Honda Civic gets the speed wrong almost 100% of the time in Slovenia where intersections automatically cancel out non-zoned speed limit signs (so no crossed out signs that the car could read). Luckily it doesn’t beep or nag about it.

(Which makes me wonder, is there a flag set to make it not beep on cars sold here? Cuz otherwise people would be returning them en masse)

orloffm 2 hours ago||
It's the same in Poland. Toyota found a way that you can install some "immobilizer" thing that hacks the system into muting the alerts (but they still blink though) and was so proud that they started calling owners offering it for install. But all the cars do beep.
doublerabbit 15 hours ago|||
Lane assistance on hire cars piss me off. If I need to swerve I shouldn't need to be pulling against the wheel -.-
GJim 4 hours ago||
I'll raise you that.....

A completely empty straight country road with just a cyclist ahead of me. I pull out to pass the cyclist with plenty of room, and the lane assist tries to swerve me into the poor bugger. Very alarming considering I had no idea the car had such a "safety" feature.

brewdad 16 hours ago||
Isn't eye tracking required there too now? If you look away, or even not in the direction the car expects, for more than a couple of seconds >> more beeps.
mono442 16 hours ago||
The car I drove from 2025 didn't have it.
Cider9986 15 hours ago||
Related: Can I disable all data collection from my vehicle? (rivian.com) 760 points 14 days ago 361 comments

(https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47967786)

alentred 16 hours ago||
Buy Nissan instead, they will do that for you free of charge. I own 2021 Nissan Leaf and Nissan sent me an email early this year telling that the communication infrastructure costs too much for them and they are taking it down.

Jokes aside, I am seriously pissed at Nissan because it was one of reasons I bought it in the first place: to pre-heat or pre-cool the car remotely before going to work, while it is still plugged to the wall charger. And they just decided to take it down. Funny thing, they even mentioned in the email that "not to worry, I can still use my AC when I am in the car". Wow.

Sorry, rant. Anyway, my point being - buy Nissan Leaf, no connectivity guaranteed by the manufacturer, LOL.

866-RON-0-FEZ 14 hours ago||
> to pre-heat or pre-cool the car remotely before going to work, while it is still plugged to the wall charger

Modern aftermarket remote start systems work with both ICE and EVs alike. Take a look at Compustar. You can remote start your Leaf with a key fob from 1/2 mile away, no telemetry, connectivity, or silly app needed.

ThinkingGuy 11 hours ago||
There's also OPVS, which supposedly can be self-hosted (I don't know how good their product is; I'm content with 3G-only 2012 Leaf being permanently offline).

https://www.openvehicles.com

mixermachine 15 hours ago|||
That is crazy. 5 years and they are already shutting down the servers? They should be forced to open up the API when they shut it down. Running a replica yourself should be pretty doable.
nathan_compton 15 hours ago||
How are you dealing with the chademo only charger thing?
alentred 4 hours ago|||
Not sure what you mean, maybe it depends on region. I am in EU and have Type 2 and CHAdeMO connectors. I only charge at home and travel to go to work and back, so barely ever use CHAdeMO. I agree, though, that I don't and wouldn't travel long distances with this car.
CarVac 15 hours ago|||
If you buy a ChaDeMo Leaf you do so knowing that it will likely never go more than a hundred miles from home.
p00ter 19 hours ago||
There's going to be a lot of this going on in the future. RabbitLabs CAN Commander go BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.
threecheese 19 hours ago|
I though this was just a crazy commenter, but here:

https://rabbit-labs.com/product/cancommander/

Crazy commenter, tell us a little about this. Can I use it on any Can bus?

disastronaut 17 hours ago|||
CAN is a protocol, but the messages on the bus are implementation specific. Yes, you can use it on any CAN bus, but there's no guarantee that you will be able to decode the traffic. Some modern CAN networks are encrypted, too, because it's trivial to view the traffic. https://kentindell.github.io/2021/01/02/can2-wireshark/ has a great guide on decoding traffic with sigrok.
fullstop 18 hours ago|||
From what I understand the CAN traffic on my vehicle is encrypted. Clearly this does not apply to all of the traffic, as I can fetch some OBD2 data with a generic dongle.
stefan_ 17 hours ago||
The data on the OBD2 port is legally mandated, so can't be encrypted. But besides encryption CAN buses in a car are also separated, the bus on the OBD2 plug often can't even talk to the most interesting components.
mistyvales 14 hours ago||
I was debating replacing the head unit in my old VW, but I actually like that it has a six-disc CD changer, SD card slot (32GB max, with support for MP3, WAV, etc.), 40-pin iPod connection, and regular AUX in. I use my phone with a USB-C DAC and have never felt like I needed anything else. With AUX I can plug in my Walkmans as well (both cassette and MiniDisc)!

Dangerous, but hilarious (Dubai raver has set up a 303 and 606 to make acid house while he drives): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwYtjQk0QaU

rdiddly 13 hours ago|
Thanks - Seeing how easy this was, encouraged me to do the same for my Subaru. The info and parts were easy enough to find.

Interestingly, Subaru itself used to make a DCM bypass kit for its cars. When AT&T shut down its 3G network, Subaru was stuck replacing all the DCMs, because they would search and search forever for a connection to a network that no longer existed, and slowly drain the battery. But there initially wasn't enough inventory to replace them all, so they offered these bypass kits if you weren't an active Starlink (cloud svcs) subscriber.

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