A loyal GM customer bought a 2022 Corvette, then couldn’t get a single insurance company to cover him. The reason wasn’t his record. It was what his own car had been quietly reporting about him.
Your car is almost certainly doing the same thing right now. This is the model-by-model breakdown of the always-on tracker hiding in Toyota, Ford, and GM vehicles, where it lives on each one, and what owners are actually doing about it in their own driveways. One of these three brands you can shut up in five minutes. One of them you can’t shut up at all.
Find your vehicle in the chapters below.
Looks like my 2019 Corolla is going to remain my car for a very long time.
From what I can find in my research, it seems to be the newest model that didn’t get the tracker from the factory. (the hatchback variant did get the tracker in 2019, but the sedan didn’t)
In some GM cars, there was a physical pin bridge that connected the cell radio to the telematics box (onstar). You could simply remove it once you got to the box that housed the two modules.
Now, it’s much more difficult. In some cases you can disconnect the telematics box itself or pull a fuse, but you’ll have persistent error messages in the display saying how something is wrong. Some features of the car will also be disabled; some expected (app-based controls), others less so.
As time goes on and this surveillance becomes deeply ingrained or dare I say it, legally required, it won’t be possible to do this at all. The idea of free movement without being spied on is mostly over now, but the doors will close entirely soon.
Between your mobile phone, your car telematics, flock cameras you can see, other cameras you cannot, electronic toll beacons, there are very few places you can travel in a car without being surveilled.
The worst part is that a lot of people will say that this is good, that this prevents crime. To be very clear about this, surveillance does NOT prevent crime. It might help to solve it after the fact, but a camera will not stop a murder. A telematics beacon will not prevent a kidnapping. The common belief that these things make people safer is 100% false. They are only good to find the body a day or two later. Show me the stats for lower crime rates before/after all this crap went in. The reality is that crime in the US has been on the decline for decades prior to all this nonsense. Wealthy neighborhoods have always had low crime. What have these things done to change anything? Where is the evidence?
The general public is being sold a lie when they’re told that cameras prevent crime, don’t believe the lie. The only goal of surveillance is to monitor and control the public, most of whom do not commit crimes. Everyone who is ok with the current state of affairs needs a wake up call, but most people do not think outside of their own little bubble. Just like politicians who are against something–until one of their children are impacted by it, then they all of a sudden change their tune.
Every person who cares at all about freedom should be against all of this. No more telematics in the car. No more cameras, no more mass surveillance of the population at large.
Does nobody realize this is AI slop through and through?
Yup, whole video put through using stock images and clips and other 3rd party footage, mostly unrelated to the subject. I see a LOT of these lately as a car nerd, but luckily they’re very easy to identify and ignore.
… Same tradeoffs… Well how about just find the antenna and give it a little snip snip? It’s probably a wire or a PCB trace.
Because pulling a fuse is way easier
This meeting (video) should have been an email (article).
Here’s a formatted version of the transcript: https://rentry.org/9a9sm9ds, although it lacks images that are probably important to knowing what parts of the car are where.
If the images are even related to any cars they talk about. This is a slop video, the channel produces dozens of them.
Much better off googling for your own specific model as best case scenario the video has a screenshot of a forum thread for that model anyway, worse case it’s unrelated.
Yes. I hate video instructionals. Text and pictures please.
These keep coming as YouTube videos. Has anyone compiled this information into an easy-to-search website with text and relevant pictures?
They use AI to generate these videos, if the information is correct at all then it’s from forums, Facebook groups and reddit posts, all of which can be found via google even if you don’t want to go to those specific websites.
Always better off going to model or manufacturer specific forums for stuff like this.
IKR, sick of yucktube
You can’t monitise articles as easily.
Also, don’t forget if you still want things to work you have to buy this harness!
This vid is crap. Contradictory of itself and way too long.
Perfect use case for a vehicle specific infographic
Guarantee you pull fuses and you’ll get a subsystem problem. The Money light. The data antenna is in the roof shark fin, it can be unplugged. Or, you can cover the sharkfin with metal tape.
That stops the thing from having a strong signal, but does it stop it from communicating at all? Even if it can’t connect 99% of the time, that 1% could still be enough to exfiltrate your data.
RF won’t get past foil tape. You can put it inside the fin to hide it.
Ground the tape to the chassis/body. Might have to remove the fin and remount it to get good contact without drilling a new hole. After that, RF signals are gonna be gone.
Your car is almost certainly doing the same
Its definitely not because I dont have one.
I sincerely hope the content creator was fired over this blunder.
