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Comment by beefee | Hacker News Reader

Owners may want to disable this in hardware rather than relying on a sketchy opt-out mechanism. The relevant part is the "data communications module". It has an LTE modem and a backup battery, so it's able to transmit even if the car battery is disconnected. It requires a little bit of dashboard disassembly to access. You can either remove it or disconnect the LTE and GPS antennas. Toyota has technical documents available for $25 at https://techinfo.toyota.com.

It would be great if there was some website that collected all the detailed instructions for removing the spy devices from different car models.

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do you know if there are easy equivalents for other car brands? when I bought my new car in 2019 I also wanted to disable any built in GPS/Data connection but it was hard to find any instruction if nobody else had done it or documented it yet. subaru if you happen to know!

edit: hah, should have just googled it first. looks like people are trying it out more now

https://www.ascentforums.com/threads/disabling-the-starlink-...

in Europe, eCall is part of the homologation and must not be deactivated, by law.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECall

Do you have a source for it being illegal for an owner to disable it on their own vehicle? Your link talks about it being required in new cars but I didn't see anything that said you couldn't deactivate it.

the logic is this:

ecall is a functional safety feature of your vehicle, which, like tire pressure sensors or abs or ESR or whathaveyou has been prescribed to save human life's. it only phones home, so the logic, in case of a severe accident. automatic registry of any sim card with mobile network towers is just a technicality, according to that logic.

ecall is a prescribed feature for homologation (German: Typzulassung). if you manipulate a homologation relevant feature of the vehicle, your general operating license becomes void ("allgemeine Betriebserlaubnis erlischt")

in other words: you can sure disable it on your own car --- but that car in that moment loses insurance and you're no longer allowed to operate it on the road, except to bring it to the workshop.

that's the mechanics of "homologation" and "general operating license", i.e. the mechanics of road safe vehicles.

now, are you looking for a source of these mechanics? or a source for where ecall is listed as generic mandatory feature?

In Germany only?

in Europe. details may vary but overall eCall is a EU thing, and so is homologation and regulations for safety features.

"tracker detection and removal" would be a great service for a local service garage to offer.

Vinyl wrap with Faraday cage on the inside layer? A modern "cone of silence"

Hah, tinfoil wrapped car, for the tinfoil-hat crowds...

In many cases this isn’t viable. On my car for for instance - a 2016 Subaru - removing the telematics module also disables all front speakers because the audio signal is routed through it.

Sounds like a relatively easy problem to solve. Install your own sound system.

https://www.autoharnesshouse.com/69018.html

This was the first result when I searched "telematics module front speakers"

And you would want to do it before you take your new car home, or create a pattern of PII.

I removed the DCM from my RAV4. The annoying part is that it disables the front-right speaker.

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