Just came across a post on Reddit asking about cars, thought I’d ask here too.
The article the reddit post cited was: https://www.thankyourobot.com/2023/07/on-road-to-privacy-invasion-unmasking.html
In short, if I’m in the market to purchase a new car, which one should I go for to improve privacy? And if we assume that such a thing is not possible anymore, what can we do for our (newer) cars to be more private? I was considering things like removing the radio antenna (if I can, that depends on the model of the car).
I’m also interested in knowing just how would car companies mine information from a car if I haven’t connected my mobile to it? Do cars have SIMs inside them that have free 4G/5G access and can send information that way? How would I check if my car is doing something like this?
Thanks!
Easiest by far is just an older car with no wireless capabilities whatsoever.
I hear tell its possible to find the wireless antennas and physically remove them from certain models. If you’re buying brand new, try to find a dealer that let’s you not have any wireless capabilities. No idea if that’s still possible these days…
Very old cars don’t have great fuel efficiency which would be my reason to not go for them, although that depends on how much I will drive going forward (life is in a bit of flux). The problem is that I know nothing about cars and repairing them
Another problem is that even when the car doesn’t have any wireless features, they often have an “emergency sim card”