Car companies will tell you themselves if you wade through their privacy policies. The information they harvest can include precise location data about everywhere you go, who's in the car with you, what's on the radio and whether you buckle your seatbelt, drive too fast or brake too hard. Some can gather details you might not expect like your weight, age, race and facial expressions. Do you pick your nose? Some cars have cameras on the inside pointed at the driver's seat. And most come with internet connections that can ship off that data as you drive in blissful ignorance.

Nope! I have a 20+ y/o car, so mine is not. No touch screen, no spyware, just a car with buttons and knobs that we drive around.

Luckily I drive a piece of last-millenium machinery.

May the japanese engineers that designed it with reliability in mind be praised.

everyone should buy/wear these new driving hats I found

Driving Hat

I pulled the fuse that runs that stuff in my car. Don't need anything it disabled, so I don’t give a fuck.

Sure if I ever need service it might be a problem, but I’ll cross that bridge when and if I get to it, and maybe we’ll have better data protections by then.

This is one reason I haven't bought an electric car.

So what's the solution? What's the car where we can opt out or easiest to remove the sensors without it breaking?

It's also probably recording the password you typed on your phone.

Don't give the password to police? They'll just ask your car.

If you bought a Nissan, you've given them the right to collect data about your sexual orientation and history. It's in their privacy policy.

So like, what car do you buy new if you want to mod it to not phone home?

As if I needed more reasons to keep repairing my shitbox from 2013. Japanese, no internet connection or infotainment integration. I could take out a 12 month loan for an engine replacement every year and it still wouldn’t cost as much as a car payment + full coverage insurance.

Mine isn't. I got a 2023 bolt and immediately upon taking possession, pulled the fuse that runs that shit. I could go behind the screen and remove the onstar module entirely, and I probably will to restore the nav and location-based charging at some point, but not a priority. Pulling the fuse didn't disable anything I can’t live without, since my old car didn't even have the stuff that gets disabled.

I don’t use apps on my phone that connect to the car, and haven't even synced my phone for calls. I have an old android I factory reset and created a local account on, which doesn’t have a sim card, just hotspot from my active phone, and I use that for the EV charge location apps, totally isolated from anything else because they, too, syphon data.

I’d personally never buy a vehicle that couldn’t have all that shit disabled. It may still collect it, but if I cant intercept or prevent transmission of it, I wouldn't buy the vehicle.

I’m hoping that by the time I need to replace this one, we have at least started to invest in decent public transit that doesn't take 3-10x as long as driving. It could happen. Else I’ll just never leave home because I won’t buy one.

I'm unreasonably infuriated by this title format.

My car isn't spying on me. It doesn't have any kind of wireless connectivity whatsoever.

Laughs in 2003 Mazda and 2016 Kia

laughs in 20 year old shitbox

I possess no such thing.

Love me some good Beeb coverage, this is great

What do you mean trying

I just don't see a way out of this in the US. The only thing that could convince lawmakers to remove privacy violating sensors in cars is Chinese EVs spying on American drivers. As long as they're prohibited from being sold in the country though that's still too vague a threat for them to do anything about it.

Cats are trying to spy on you

laughs in mid 90s vehicles..

Data centers are being built for this, not so you can have chatgpt. Please realize that is huge. We are transitioning into a new era that is obviously going to take adjustment to live with. And probably not all people will be able to deal with that adjustment. And maybe the whole idea isn't the right decision for humanity to make. Or maybe it is, and it will make the world a different place for the better.

...imagine that that's why we have trump as president imagine that he is just part of an operation. He is the actor, maybe unknowly, or the fall guy, for a plan. Kind of like a coup type plan, but the idea is to force the transition over to digital life, because this is sort of a cyber arms race... Peter theil, at least from the little I've heard of him, might be right... There is serious things happening and the transition to digital ideology is truely our natural trajectory coming from what we've built as a nation or species.

I don't believe it's ethical, but when has history been ethical.

I think people get focused on the wrong things. I think people focus on psychological marketed debates, and narratives. Bigger things are happening and we are distracted away from them. People underestimate how you can use psychology to move a human being. You can use psychology to control a whole industry, and nation.

Life is changing. There's very little chance of stopping it. I don't think people understand what that would probably entail.

Looking at it ... Like human life is organic, and we are getting forced to say good bye to that natural connection to the universe. Maybe time goes by so fast now and this is the first time we are really being able see the change of an era while it's happening.

I feel that COVID feeling of "oh fuck life is different now and it's never going to be normal again."

This is the wave we are on and we need to do our best to learn how to ride it together, even with all of our differences. In reality, I don't think there are rules to this game. This is chaos territory for people really playing the real game. Humanity is at stake and our governments aren't helping the true mission of honest humanity.

Are we going to reach a time when regular people truly join the world stage of geo politics? Like wars different than the wars we've known? Almost like instead of "world war 3" something more like world civil war is coming due to the divisions of ideology clashing, and the threat to regular average citizens why of life and existing? Basically all of humans worst traits seem to be being acted on instead of learning to just exist and follow the lessons passed down of existential coexistence. Proper spiritual connection to the heart of the universe.

/...just a flow of what ifs....