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Can we prevent cars from sending data to servers if we remove their antennae? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago by MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.world to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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I don't know anything about cars.

Now that we have established that cars seriously undermine our privacy (look at the flurry of posts in this community in the last few hours), what can we do about it?

From a networking POV, if you remove the ability to connect to the Internet, it doesn't matter what the car is recording as long as you can ensure there is no physical tampering. Depending on who you are, this is a good idea, and doable for the most part (very few people have the technical knowledge to pull out the right chip from a car).

So, how do we achieve this? I implore the community to invite mechanical/car engineers who can help us on this matter, and to form methods to prevent vehicles from accessing the Internet without express consent from the user.

Thanks!

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[-] over_clox@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

Who said the computer components you're looking for are in the dash? I mean I'll be honest, I dunno about these modern vehicles, but vehicles I've worked on in the past have the main computer in weird unexpected places like under the driver's seat or in the passenger side cowell area.

I do get your point though, yes such modifications might be simple on paper, but cost quite a bit in labor to actually accomplish.

Regardless, I've done dashboards too, even drove my car around for a day with the entire dash completely missing, because I needed to drive it to the store during service that took me two days.

Hooray for dumb cars!

[-] Rocketpoweredgorilla@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 year ago

I have a "differently abled" car as well that doesn't have Onstar (it came out on the next model year after mine.) but even it has most of it's electronics buried under the dash by the firewall. You'd have to pay me to replace it with all this tracking crap they stuff in there now.

[-] over_clox@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

I'm stealing that from you LOL!

"Differently Abled"..

this post was submitted on 06 Sep 2023

215 points (96.1% liked)

Privacy

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