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Seth Larson

These news articles clearly aren't reaching a wide enough audience, because every time I say that I'll be buying older cars without software/connectivity I get a bunch of surprised Pikachu faces.

wired.com/story/subaru-locatio

WIRED · Subaru Security Flaws Exposed Its System for Tracking Millions of CarsBy Andy Greenberg

And I love Subaru, I've driven one for the past 15+ years. Great for Minnesota with the right tires, you just will never get stuck ever.

@sethmlarson I hate that this is where we are. My 2023 Subaru is safer than any car I have ever driven. I have (knock on wood) has zero accidents in ~20 some years but it has saved me and seen things I couldn't see otherwise. The lane assistant, auto-breaking, cameras, etc are night and day safer to use.

I also hate that there is no good way of opting out of this slime.

I am also annoyed that all mobile phones are portable surveillance devices, and there's no opt-out besides not carrying one.

@webology On older models it's possible to remove the modules/fuses responsible for cellular connectivity ("DCM") without impacting the cars performance. This is what was done on my own car to remove the issue w/ 2G+3G unavailability for Starlink causing a power draw on the battery.

Might be something to look into if you don't care about automatic emergency call / location features?

@sethmlarson @webology thank you for the clarification, i was so goddamn confused.

@dave @sethmlarson I miss the days where companies pretended to care about trademarks and other legal names. Since one is straight out of The Terminator... it's also concerning.

@sethmlarson filing under TIL.

The trade-off is worth it for now, but there should be more granular control over it, like I get with my iPhone. With a family that's had to use the emergency call / location feature once, I want it for as long as long as it's included (five years I think?)

@webology Yeah but Jeff if they can't /spy on you/ how are they going to pay for the service? Make the car more expensive??? That's crazy talk.

Now that every car manufacturer is doing this, I'm waiting for the first one to break rank and create a "privacy-focused" car that doesn't pull any of these tricks. Perhaps they are biding their time until this is more widely known?

@sethmlarson I think Tesla pretty much steamrolled over any and all consumer protections. Last I heard, they had legislation to hide/manipulate their crash results legally.

That does not get any better soon, and I don't think either party will ever take that on.

@webology I found it curious that the billionaire Nazi thought that it was the right opportunity to brag about being able to remotely control, unlock, and spy on their customers' vehicles after one was involved in a terrorist attack. Guess the right people were listening and he trusts the algorithmic filters to make sure the rest of us aren't.