this post was submitted on 12 Jan 2024
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Privacy

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I want to buy a new car, but it needs to be privacy friendly. Sadly you cannot really buy any new Car that is.

Has anybody any experience on making your modern car not phone home to its company, by removing the hardware it uses to do?

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[–] [email protected] 51 points 10 months ago (2 children)

While this seems like a great plan; I wouldn't put it past manufacturers to throw an error message and disable the vehicle for 'safety' when it detects a missing network connection for an extended period and/or disabled hardware during self-test.

I hate this dystopian hellscape :(

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The car would likely inform the owner to visit a service center and disable features that rely on network connection, but would not disable the car. The warning would be crying wolf, so a warning of actual concern may be ignored as part of the known connectivity error; which may lead to bigger problems.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Given recent examples of cars doing exactly this (disabling drive due to perceived hardware/software errors), namely BMW: I'm not very hopeful.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

When I was last working in the automotive industry about two decades ago, a lot of effort was being put into protecting BIOS on diagnostic laptops, so that only "authentic" manufacturer diagnostic tools could be used to service the vehicles.

Pretty sure that development has continued.