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Comment by drnick1 | Hacker News Reader

> Finally, there's the issue of privacy. Most manufacturers contract with analytics vendors to send your data back to them. You can't even turn it off.

You absolutely can. Pull the fuse of the cellular modem aka "telematics unit" or even completely remove it. Some vehicles don't have a separate fuse, in which case you will need to physically unplug the modem. Do your research and don't buy any car where this can't be done more or less painlessly.

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Yeah unless its integrated into another module. Or you remove or unplug it, and suddenly it throws an annoying error because a module is missing. Or even your car goes into limp mode because of some kind of weird cascade failure.

There might be some cars this works on now, but it's going to be harder and harder to do over time as things get more integrated, and the more they realize they want that sweet location data money.

If it comes to that, an alternative hack would be to replace the LTE antenna by a dummy load.

Well thats a nice theory but do you yourself give guarantee to all models that they will keep working after such potentially destructive 'hack' ? I don't think so. Its trivial for manufacturer to make it stop working because of ie some security blah and just having a big warning on the screen to go to the repair shop.

So a typical internet advice - don't listen to it uncritically, or not at all.

Pull the fuse during your test drive maybe.

> Well thats a nice theory but do you yourself give guarantee to all models that they will keep working after such potentially destructive 'hack' ?

The mod is reversible, I don't see how this could ever be an issue. But as I said, do your research beforehand.

Any sites which describe this across models? What else do you lose out on?

Not that I know of, but I have seen tutorials on Youtube for popular makes and models, and the issue is frequently discussed on car forums.

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