Help me identify possible tracking device found in my car
gist.github.com
gist.github.com
I found identical looking devices by using Google Lens and focusing on just the black box with the green button.
https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2016/08/never-buy-car-alar...
https://www.reddit.com/r/whatisit/comments/rnr48t/found_unde...
https://www.reddit.com/r/subaru/comments/7m9dv9/mysterious_b...
That's what the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnuson%E2%80%93Moss_Warranty... is for.
This is a complete hack job and I doubt there is a single component related to the electrical system that wouldn't be an easy denial from Honda unless the dealer played along... and in a modern car so much is tied to the electrical system that, while technically they didn't just void their entire warranty, they did just gut it to the point of being nearly useless.
When your 800$ laptop's speakers start buzzing and the service center says you need to pay 80$ for the repair because the tamper seal on the RAM was broken, are you really going to spend 30k and a year of your free time to sue them over it?
They know that as well as you do. I've found they usually do more passive aggressive / ambiguous stuff than overtly break the law.
Once we had a Toshiba laptop with a bad motherboard. They replaced it with some other board that didn't have drivers for Linux, or even for Windows.
Lenovo took over thirty days to repair my IBM thinkpad (broken screen connector), and when it came back, the high voltage screen transformer was shorted to the case, so it shocked the heck out of me when I turned it on.
On top of that, they didn't replace the broken screen connector, and claimed it was "no fault". This was after the local lenovo repair people found the fault, and lenovo said they couldn't ship the required part.
Are there no small claims courts where you live? Ombudmans? It really isn't a huge deal, nor is it very expensive. It's not 30k - more like $50. And not a year, usually few weeks at most.
>>? If the manufacturer says your warranty is void - it is.
No, it isn't, that's the whole point.
I once caught a motherboard on fire, then found some unrelated mechanical issues with it. (It still worked, except for the bad connector.)
The burn marks were cosmetic, and the shop sent me a DOA replacement. (That's more a story about the shop being awesome, but they were technically legally obligated to honor the warranty.)
Half a tank of gas later, Dealer B claimed the warranty was void because of the camera. We brought it in because the radio kept freaking out and it would drain the battery if left off over night.
There was an active recall for both those issues. Dealer C fixed them by installing a firmware update.
We also had a good time at a Toyota dealership, but any car buying with them had a $6290 markup....
Given the state of the market, choosing between many cars wasn't an option, but outside of that, I care that the process is fast, there aren't sneaky charges, and the interaction is respectful. I prefer all my paperwork printed out, and that's what they did by default.
The dealership had previously repaired the moon roof, and inadvertently damaged the headliner. So, while working on the emissions issue they replaced the whole headliner. The replacement is a little cheesier than from the factory, but good enough.
There's still an exterior rattle that they claimed they fixed 3 times now. At least they're trying. Last time I took it in, they removed several trim pieces and drove it around. I'm just going to have to track it down myself I guess.
I bought a new Mustang in 2010, and paid for the 5 year extended service plan. The hood paint corroded and the dealership repainted it, and gave me a rental car for the week. The hood has since corroded again and it's out of warranty now. I am mulling over splurging on a new paint job, with a classic Mustang racing stripe.
Buying the Mustang, I went to three dealerships. The first one, I got a test drive, and then the salesmen just walked away. I think he assumed I wasn't serious when I said I was buying a car that day. The second dealership, the salesman was super sleazy and pushy, and so I walked away. The third dealership, the salesman was really relaxed and professional. He asked if I was financing, and when I said no, he said he didn't like to waste time haggling and was happy just to move inventory. He offered me a price just $200 above the friends-and-family x-code price.
People tend to imagine their lives are more interesting and worthy of surveillance than they really are :)
the three letter agencies don't care about people who play video games and watch cat videos all day
(Talking out of my ass)
unless you're suspected of smuggling nuclear secrets
ftfy
Private companies are so much scarier than the NSA when it comes to privacy -- you have none -- your life's data is to be mined, brokered, and sold to the highest bidder.
The NSA only cares about you if you are talking to a small number of known hostile foreign people who are already a party to a FISA warrant.
The data is used for improved road safety (real-time traffic jam awareness) and also so premium clients can find parking spots.
In this case, there is no protection for data from your car, beyond the fact that carmakers don't want to share it. Writing regulations to cover it is being done now, and the tug of war is between giving any company who wants it access and giving companies the car manufacturers themselves select and get paid by access to it.
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/your-c...
I can only ask that you refrain from spreading misinformation - it muddies the waters.
Quoting:
The contest is entering a pivotal phase as EU regulators look to hammer out the world's first laws for the ballooning industry around web-enabled vehicles, pitting carmakers against a coalition of insurers, leasing companies and repair shops.
[...]
Car manufacturers, guarding their gatekeeper role in accessing data from their vehicles, have resisted specific regulations for in-vehicle data, saying that protecting consumers is paramount.
"Europe's auto industry is committed to giving access to the data generated by the vehicles it produces," said a spokesperson for the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association (ACEA). "However, uncontrolled access to in-vehicle data poses major safety, (cyber) security, data protection and privacy threats."
We are in the long swing where people think only state tyrany matters. They forgot how bad private tyrany can get, of robber barons were.
We're in the initial stages of a new dark age for humanity. Surveillance Capitalism and our generalized Adult Immaturity is going to swallow the free world, and it may be hundreds of years before actual human maturity develops to allow whatever comes after.
Intel agencies privatize their spying to get around warrants. Private companies spying on you are not a far step from the NSA spying on you directly.
> The NSA only cares about you if you are talking to a small number of known hostile foreign people who are already a party to a FISA warrant.
Hah. If you have any political aspiration at all, you are a potential target. FBI lied to attain FISA warrants, and the lawyer responsible got a slap on the wrist. DC juries will never convict one of their own, there is zero accountability at this point.
Why are you so confident about who the NSA cares about?
COINTELPRO anyone?
Catholics, Communists, Woke subversives, or white supremacists. If you are part of American politics there is a mainstream conspiracy theory that your group has.
used cars, on the other hand, are a different story. complain to American Honda perhaps? Contact info for anyone's convenience:
https://owners.honda.com/help/customer-relations
American Honda Motor Co., Inc.
Honda Automobile Customer Service
Mail Stop: CHI-5
1919 Torrance Blvd.
Torrance, CA 90501-2746
The car had all sorts of crazy power problems. Smart display would randomly crash, interior lights wouldn’t work, just… flakey.
Called the dealer and demanded they remove this. Electrical problems went away instantly.
Super frustrating.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30833566
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30833566#30838294
I discovered it when my new car started having the same issues you saw.
NOTE: it's somewhere between a scam and a crappy business practice. Here in southern california it's by no means only used cars or shady financing. The dealers install them on all the cars to keep track of their own inventory. Then they try to sell it to you as a kind of lojack for $$$$. If you are smart and decline, they just deactivate the unit (stop paying for the service), but do you think that they remove it? or repair the wiring?
Even though we always pay in full for cars, the dealer has you talk to the finance guy who will try to sell you useless addons like undercoating and an “alarm system” which has already been butchered into the car by the dealer. (If you buy it they would stick a key module with a blinking red light under the dash somewhere, but most of the circuit is already there.)
OT: I was wondering if you were gordonjcp of scotlug fame (i don’t expect you’d remember me, i used to attend / was briefly active circa 2002-2004) but the mention of Citroen sealed it :-) hope you’re well!
Bad example really. Depending on car age that might be insane value.
If people treated their cars like boats the car bodies would last for 30 years easely. Take it up once a year and paint the belly ...
I just wanted to defend the awesome concept of "painting" the belly of cars.
Why do I get the feeling that If i did that to the car I sold privately, I would be in jail really fast?
https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/dmh5s/does_this...
https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/doe17/update_to...
Really, we swear. But we can't tell you which ones. Maybe the apps running on the cell towers.
There were many more juicy bits in that case, but this part is somewhat in the context of the discussion. The message seemed to be, plan better next time :)
Here are 2 links in Dutch: https://www.destentor.nl/zwolle/de-gier-hangt-27-jaar-cel-bo... and https://www.destentor.nl/zwolle/de-gier-vrijgesproken-van-mo...
Aha, this is about the phone :) https://www.rtvoost.nl/nieuws/2089361/27-jaar-celstraf-geeis...
The 433MHz is likely a keyfob receiver (and possibly transmitter to spoof the original key).
It has a bunch of "fake wires" acting as taps into the wiring harness, and it detects if you remove a tap and then trips trip a relay where it cuts the ignition wire that is rerouted through the unit. So I removed the device, and put the ignition wire back together and the car was back to normal. I think if OP's car still has warning lights go off, he likely nicked some of the other wires inadvertently, or broke them while pulling the taps out.
Tracking devices don't need to be nearly so complicated nor hard wired into the ignition.
If it's a remote kill for a lease/lender then you'd expect some ability to transmit it's location. Why go through all the trouble of installing a remote kill that can't transmit it's location nor actually disable the car (it still works after removal)
[edit]
Going with the KARR "dealer alarm" per other post.
Perhaps this is a part of one of those units? They have "hard wired" as a option on the site, but it's greyed out.
Speculation: the site used to talk about a PL884-200 hardwire kit but they have since stopped selling it.
And I've lived mostly in countries with pretty mild climates so there wasn't any need for this. Though even in the Netherlands this could be handy in the middle of winter or summer. Beats scraping the windows.
I always leave my manual car in gear in the opposite the direction the car would be likely to roll if the emergency brake ever failed. (If the car would roll forward, put it in reverse. If it would roll backwards put it in 1st).
Having said that, when I still had a car I used to drive old cars. My newest car was a 2005 Volvo S40. But this was also perfectly capable of starting in gear and with the clutch engaged.
My first car still had a choke :)
> My first car still had a choke :)
What car? Was it a Datsun by chance?
You can run outside and start the car then come back, as I did growing up in a cold region, but remote start is sooo much nicer.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/car-technology/a19086/...
But yeah, icy/foggy windows are a pain to clear.
I live in Montreal, and when I had an ICE car, most days, it was fine to just de-icing the windows, then start the motor, and slowly roll out of the alley. Admittedly, most winter days, it's not that cold.
Kind of drives me crazy, the smell and pollution from idling ICE cars :/
They don't need to be warmed up for the engine. They still might need to be warmed up for the driver, though.
I've had cars with auxiliary heat just for this purpose.
Also note that "if it's left in gear" is virtually irrelevant in North America, fwiw - something like under 2 percent of cars here are manual. Vast majority of vehicles and models do not have it as an option.
And as we also have pretty tiny engines here, it takes a long time to heat up this way because first the cooling water needs to get warm which takes ages with the engine running stationary. So I only did this once in a while if it was really needed.
My old Volvo did have an option to open all the windows with the remote though which was great to let the heat out in summer.
“Vehicles fitted with catalytic converters emit most of their total pollution during the first five minutes of engine operation; for example, before the catalytic converter has warmed up sufficiently to be fully effective.”
I don't there is a big benefit overall.
Before my life in tech I worked in car audio installs back in the 90s.
One day one of the senior installer techs put a remote start in his own Mazda truck which had a manual transmission. A bit of time went by and we were outside smoking one day when he must have hit the button in this pocket. Apparently the e-brake wasn't on, and the truck was in first gear, so it started and drove across the parking lot and hit the wall of a building as we all watched.
That's the key part. Proper :)
IIRC he just bypassed the sensor that would have been for Park on an automatic, since there were no manual transmission kits for sale as they were (and I think still are) illegal for sale where I live.
He would even refuse to do this sort of thing for other people so it was pretty funny it happened to him.
In my climate, on a 45c day, inside the car's going to be more than that. It's definitely a workout for the generally imported car's A/C unit. I am guilty of turning the car on and waiting under a tree or something for the AC to bring the temperature down to at least ambient.
I'm looking at a series hybrid car. I must admit, pre-conditioning the car off the battery would be pretty luxurious.
Yeah, it's getting more and more difficult to even buy them at all over here. Rather slim pickings.
As far as the dealer goes I intend to make a lot of over-the-top demands and threats until they replace the wiring with all-new OEM parts and a lifetime warranty, but I think I'll start from just pointing to California Penal Code 637.7, demanding a completely new vehicle, and seeing what happens.
It's possible. Something like that happened with my wife's car. We only found out about the tracking device when they sent us a bill in the mail to activate the tracking service.
Then, regardless, perhaps file a complaint with the appropriate state agency # they’re probably quite interested in what a prior dealer might’ve done…
Call the automakers regional representative.
Found this: https://thriveglobal.com/stories/drivers-need-to-be-aware-th...
But you'd think it'd be more clearly a GPS device.
They couldn't "install" it there so I drove off the lot. They started calling the next week to schedule the installation and I wasn't very eager to go quickly. It became apparent they really wanted this installed and eventually bothered me enough that I acquiesced.
This brought no gps functionality to the car itself so I quickly realized this was because I had ~ 610 FICO and they expected to repo the thing at some point.
I paid it off but never bothered to remove it and the whole thing really bugged me. Nobody mentioned anything the last time I bought a car with an 800+ FICO so this is either for bad credit buyers or they just do it without asking now.
I would strongly advise not doing that until you can prove that this was in fact a tracking device. I think a remote start/cutoff is much more likely, c.f.:
(I would expect that they would be reluctant to name another dealer that was actually innocent, knowing that it could turn into a libel lawsuit.)
That’s not a tracking device, and those are pretty common aftermarket additions.
Yeah, the simplest explanation is still that it is supposed to be there, but has been spliced in there to save some time and has an as of yet unknown purpose.
You can search YouTube for repo tracking devices.
You say it's a 2020 car, how many miles have you driven with the unknown device plugged and doing its job? Crazy stuff.
Update: was unable to reproduce, maybe an a/b test or security check.
I have noticed this with a lot of websites recently, things like Twitter and Instagram only sometimes ask me to log in to view things. Reddit as well, will be happy to show me some article, then later that same day it'll ask me to log in.
Dealers suck, I know everyone hates Tesla but they showed the path to getting rid of dealers
> The device uses the car's cellular data peripheral to send this information somewhere.
Maybe somebody can find what that somewhere is, or help with how to go about that.
Here's a tear down of one that looks pretty similar in principle:
Looks like an aftermarket alarm system (and some of the other comments seem to confirm that).
Kids these days…
So.. yeah, this post may expose your location better than this device.
According to the provided page, Assisted GNSS only works through an Internet connection - to connect to servers that provide cached GPS data. Triangulation comes from other technologies.
Don't be so quick to put other people down. It's not good to have that kind of thing in a community.
Guess what folks: with few exceptions, no one cares about tracking you. Enough with the paranoia already.
Try respawning as a woman and see how far this few exceptions attitude gets you?
Few exceptions: Like you know, being one of the 49.6% of people…
HN is one of those places with a higher than average number of people that groups would be interested in tracking.
They'll honk the horn and, if necessary, send a micro drone to your location that you can follow to it if it's too far away to hear the horn or you're hearing impaired.
Does anyone else find it odd that he just bought a car and effectively started using it without going over it thoroughly and familiarising himself with what controls it contains? Then again, my experience has been with far older and simpler vehicles, so perhaps newer ones are so complex that people have given up spending any time to become acquainted with them.
I’m quite interested in cars (do all the repairs in our household except body, paint, and tires) and I’ve never looked under the dash before driving off, unless I was attaching a scan tool on a used car I was buying.
When buying a factory-new car I do not ordinarily rip off the dashboard trim panels to see if the wiring has been tampered with.
If this was a desktop computer I certainly would expect even a moderately knowledgeable user to open a computer direct for the manufacturer or retailer before using it to see if there were unauthorized components present.