Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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Remove Modem/SimCard from a Car (lemmy.ml)

submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by WreckingBANG@lemmy.ml to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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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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[–] scottmeme@sh.itjust.works 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Speaking as someone who worked for a corporate auto maker, it won't be an easy task since they try to make it as difficult as possible to disable online activation if even providing the ability at all.

The only real solution is pulling the head unit and trying to find any modem and desolder it, which who knows if it would function as it had before hand since everything is integrated.

It will also hurt resale value.

[–] BearOfaTime@lemm.ee 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Or just put a power test attentuator on the antenna output.

It essentially absorbs the RF from the antenna and radiates it as heat. Since cell is pretty low power (1/2 watt max, IIRC), and a cell radio will stop trying to transmit after a while (though it will try again), I don't think it would cause any problems.

But I'm not an RF engineer.

[–] scottmeme@sh.itjust.works 1 points 9 months ago

The newer cars from the company I worked for were always trying to phone home, not sure about other companies but this one was trying to lock you into the online ecosystem.