| ▲ | chasing0entropy 5 hours ago |
| 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? |
|
| ▲ | jeroenhd an hour ago | parent | next [-] |
| > 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. |
|
| ▲ | gruez 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| >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). |
| |
|
| ▲ | galleywest200 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > 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. |
| |
| ▲ | everdrive 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | 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. | |
| ▲ | sda2 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | 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. | |
| ▲ | chneu 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | 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 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | The first 100yr of automobiles didn't have TPMS and it was mostly fine. | | |
| ▲ | pixl97 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | I mean if you consider that death rate per mile driven 'mostly fine' | | |
| ▲ | SoftTalker 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | 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 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | 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). | | |
| ▲ | jeroenhd 43 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | I don't see it often either, but my government has been very active trying to get people to do bi-monthly tire pressure checks at the very least. I don't think most people know how to do it, to be honest. Partially because people seem to think reading two pages in a manual is some kind of sisyphean task that no mortal should ever be cursed with. It's pretty crazy how little people care. Even if you don't care about the safety aspect, keeping your tires inflated well saves you a ton on fuel and tire replacements. | | |
| ▲ | rkomorn 40 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Tire pressure management was one of the striking differences between my experiences in France and in the US. In France, we'd check tire pressure at gas stations on nice machines that had built in dial gauges and were free. In the US, I had to use one of those hand gauges and the air pumps needed quarters (in most cases, especially if you weren't also buying gas). In Portugal now, the gas stations also have free air and pretty good pumps. |
| |
| ▲ | ghaff 25 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Checking oil at once universal full-service gas stations used to be extremely common. Think it pretty much went away in late-70s petroleum shortage in the US. With modern cars, it just doesn't make a lot of sense given any semblance of scheduled maintenance adherence. I (again) have a low pressure warning on one tire (getting colder in the Northern Hemisphere). It looks fine but I'll get my compressor out tomorrow and make the computer happy. A lot of modern tires can look pretty good even if, as you say, they can be quite a bit below recommended limits. | |
| ▲ | mylifeandtimes an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | maybe an age thing? When I was in high school I worked at a gas station where we would pump the gas for customers at the "full service" lane and also check their oil. The game was to upsell people an oil change. Point is, everyone saw people getting their oil checked every time they filled the tank. And checking tire pressure was a 1x/week thing. | |
| ▲ | everdrive an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | >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.) | |
| ▲ | elzbardico 40 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | You don’t see people checking tire pressures where you live? |
|
| |
| ▲ | elzbardico 41 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Frankly? I do. Remote alcohol and drugs from the equation, and driving is an absurdly safe activity. Those intrusive features have very little to do with safety. | |
| ▲ | ErroneousBosh 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Tyre pressure sensors have done nothing to affect that. |
|
|
|
|
|
| ▲ | teeray 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > Remove the antennas. Do not give in to the mirage of convenience. ERROR: unable to start engine. |
| |
| ▲ | m463 a minute ago | parent [-] | | 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. |
|
|
| ▲ | encom 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| >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 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | 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 16 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Why 2009? I've been driving the same 2003 Audi TT all my life, never failed me. |
|
|
|
| ▲ | worldsavior 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| 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 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | 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 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | >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. | | |
| ▲ | jeroenhd 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | 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. | | |
| ▲ | 1313ed01 an hour ago | parent [-] | | Probably the only good thing about this country shutting down the 2G and 3G networks now is all the spy devices that will go permanently offline. | | |
| ▲ | jeroenhd an hour ago | parent [-] | | On the one hand, they won't be able to communicate with the home base anymore. On the other hand, they'll light up the map like a Christmas tree if someone ever turns on a stingray in their vicinity. |
|
| |
| ▲ | everdrive 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | 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. |
|
|
|
