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Comment by ru552 | Hacker News Reader

It's not illegal, it's just that it doesn't allow it in the UI. Who do you call to have that service disabled? No one knows. The best you can do is talk to someone and have the auto renewal turned off. That doesn't turn off the existing service until the renewal period hits though.

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It doesn't matter what the UI allows, I'm talking about physically disabling it. I wouldn't trust a software setting about this.

> Who do you call to have that service disabled? No one knows.

If you're not too squeamish about this sort of thing, you could likely find out how to disable this yourself in your vehicle with a web search.

If you aren't comfortable with that, I'd bet that any serious motorhead would likely be able to help, as would any independent auto shop.

There's got to be a fuse to pull.

IIRC in some vehicles it is part of the ECM and can't be disabled without also effectively disabling the entire engine.

There still has to be an antenna somewhere in a location where it can avoid all the EM interference. It seems like disconnecting that would be sufficient.

On my truck there is, but disabling the module also disables the whole infotainment. You could probably just go aftermarket but seems like a lot of work.

Unplug the GPS or the cellular network antenna. You might get an antenna error but it should keep working.

Surely you can find the GPS antenna and disconnect it?

Better to replace it with an equivalent resistor so the ECU can't tell the difference between no-antenna and no-signal.

Or maybe just desolder the one capacitor between the physical antenna and LNA. Provided it's not in a can.

Is the GPS two way or one way? I had the impression that the GPS signals went from satellite to earth, but the receivers did not send a signal to the GPS satellite. I thought onstar connected the cellular network. If I have the wrong information and somebody has more specifics about this, I would really like to know. From reading the wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OnStar Looks like the cellular network is used. Is the cellular antenna and the GPS antenna the same or are there two physical antenna? If so, then I assume one can just disconnect it. Since according to the article it says 4g. Normally cellular providers discontinue old network, 2G and 3G network have been taken down in recent years. Does anybody know when 4g network will be removed/disabled? I did find: https://www.corvetteforum.com/forums/c8-general-discussion/4... https://www.silveradosierra.com/threads/disable-on-star.7196... If the 4g network is taken down at some point, then whatever functionality that uses it will be disabled as well. So, one would think that perhaps that part of the system should be able to be replaced. If so, can't one just remove that part of the system? It is probably hard to remove, because if it is easy, then theft system is not as good.

One more thought, in California one can request a copy of one's data and also request that it be deleted. Has anybody in CA requested a copy of all the data that has been collected? How much data per month or day does it collected? Has anybody requested that their data be deleted? Would this make it difficult the manufacturer to train the driving assistance AI if enough people requested that their data be deleted?

If you disconnect the GPS antenna the car won’t be able to get a GPS position to report via OnStar.

GPS is receive-only for civilians.

The sharkfin style antenna pod is typically a PCB with several different antennas on it: https://p.globalsources.com/IMAGES/PDT/B1188507781/Shark-fin...

But for most cars today, removing the antenna would require removing the dash and radio, possibly voiding the warranty or a lease agreement if you have one.

Interesting comment about AI training data... surely that would violate GDPR.

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