What I mean was you can not subscribe to OnStar, and then you don’t have OnStar no more. The spying hardware is there, just not used.
As opposed to modern cars with which you don’t subscribe to anything and they spy on you without your consent, and there’s nothing you can do about it short of - like you said - ripping out the spying hardware.
I’ve wondered how hard it would be to turn off the cellular radio if you really cared enough.
I would suspect though that if you connected the car to your phones internet though it’d do all the snitching stuff that was queued. You’d probably need some sort of firewall on the phone blocking the cars communication, while still letting you play music.
I’ve wondered how hard it would be to turn off the cellular radio if you really cared enough.
You can but it’s not that simple: my neighbor found the antenna for his car’s spyware transmitter in the side-view mirror (can’t remember which car), cut the wire, and almost immediately, the dashboard reported a fault and started bitching and moaning that the car needed servicing.
Yeah but the crucial bit of difference was, if you thought OnStar was too invasive, you could turn it off or buy a car without it.
Good luck buying a car that isn’t online and snitching on you all the time, or disabling the telemetry today.
You can disable your own access to the service. Short of ripping out the cellular module, you can’t disable OnStar’s access.
What I mean was you can not subscribe to OnStar, and then you don’t have OnStar no more. The spying hardware is there, just not used.
As opposed to modern cars with which you don’t subscribe to anything and they spy on you without your consent, and there’s nothing you can do about it short of - like you said - ripping out the spying hardware.
I’ve wondered how hard it would be to turn off the cellular radio if you really cared enough.
I would suspect though that if you connected the car to your phones internet though it’d do all the snitching stuff that was queued. You’d probably need some sort of firewall on the phone blocking the cars communication, while still letting you play music.
You can but it’s not that simple: my neighbor found the antenna for his car’s spyware transmitter in the side-view mirror (can’t remember which car), cut the wire, and almost immediately, the dashboard reported a fault and started bitching and moaning that the car needed servicing.
This is why those of us who actually are paying attention have been planning to continue driving our 2000s-and-older cars indefinitely.