logoalt Hacker News

bitparadoxtoday at 3:14 PM5 repliesview on HN

I posted a flavor of this comment on an article a few months ago, but it's relevant here:

I have a seven year old Volkswagen, not financed. I'm security conscious and made sure to disable all the data collection I could find in the companion app before removing my account, turn off remote access services, dig through the infotainment to turn off what I could, etc.

Last year I requested a Carfax on it, and one of the fields in the request was current mileage. I entered an estimate like 75000 miles. On form submission, that field failed validation with red subtext along the lines of 'this is less than the last reported mileage of 75345, reported <5 or so days prior>'. Checking my odometer and looking at my past few days' trips, that was indeed accurate.

The car hadn't been to a shop or out of my possession in weeks, so I can only assume the telemetry was still dialing home and selling to third parties despite my best efforts to disable it.


Replies

noman-landtoday at 4:14 PM

Try finding the fuse and pulling it. It will be in the manual.

show 1 reply
trouve_searchtoday at 3:27 PM

Couldn't you put some sort of faraday cage around the antenna?

show 1 reply
Simulacratoday at 3:44 PM

What did you do, or what are you going to do? That would piss me off until i found the antenna and broke it

bookofjoetoday at 3:51 PM

"Resistance is futile." See also: LG TVs, etc.

cineticdaffodiltoday at 4:41 PM

[dead]