How to opt out of the privacy nightmare that comes with new Hondas

Imo, the only solution is every device with an antenna must be legally required to put a manual off switch.

Cell service, wifi, Bluetooth, any future service. If it broadcasts it needs a physical off switch.

If I sold my car to a government official and they found out I had hidden a camera, microphone and GPS in the car, I'd get a visit from the FBI. Yet companies do it with impunity. Does the CEO of Subaru have recordings of Bernie Sanders driving in his car?

The current generation of the ford mustang Mach-e has its mobile telemetry cellular antenna wired to an isolated fuse that you can just pull out to kill it. I was astonished to learn how straight forward the process is supposed to be.
- I don't trust that they won't save the data and upload it during a servicing.
And each type of communication needs it's own switch. Don't let them pull some BS trying to make you enable all the hardcore tracking via a cell network just because you want to connect to Bluetooth.
- its* own switch.
- For phones, Pinephone is very nearly this. The only thing is that GPS and cell service are on the same switch (because they're handled by the same chip on the board)
There's always the carefully applied soldering iron.
- If only I knew where.
For phones, Pinephone is very nearly this. The only thing is that GPS and cell service are on the same switch (because they're handled by the same chip on the board)

I hope people realize that the solution isn’t really to just not buy one, especially since this is the way the industry is heading. The solution is regulations, strict regulations.

Stuff like this should be a slam dunk for congress but we all know which side they are on.

Agreed. It's really hard to understate how ineffective "voting with your wallet" can be. The fact is simply that nobody honestly cares. Even if you get 100 people to boycott a company, would 100 out of millions of consumers really make a difference? Of course not.

And of course, you always have cases like this where everybody does it. Same thing goes for TVs - if everyone spies on you, the only real solution is to not have a TV. Yes, I know there are exceptions here and there, but bad practices like these force buyers into making compromises that they shouldn't have to. Capitalism should be predicated on companies offering the best product to earn their income. It should not be about companies having the least bad product and trying every terrible thing that they can get away with.

(Of course, we all know that capitalism is a farce.)
- Well you are voting with your wallet, the only problem is you've been out voted. Honda makes good automotives and part of the "price" now is people giving them their data. People just don't understand/care enough to not want to buy a Honda. If this were really a big deal to people it would open a place in the market for new automotive companies like Rivian, Lucid, or Polestar to gain massive ground by not doing this.
  
  This is an education issue. We need to inform people about the dangers of a lack of data privacy. If they still don't care, then so be it.
- A system with the goal being best or even optimal for all involved would never be called capitalism, even if capitalism didn't exist.
- Even if you get 100 people to boycott a company, would 100 out of millions of consumers really make a difference?
  
  There's definitely an economic impact to a vehicle looking or driving like shit. And I'm sure you'll see some amount of consumer migration higher than 0.01% of the retail base.
  
  But there's also a lot of obfuscation, deception, and outright lying in the automotive sales industry. So its less a question of "Will consumers reject this feature?" and more "Will consumers even be aware of this feature?"
  
  Capitalism should be predicated on companies offering the best product
  
  What happens when the retail customers have be commodified? What happens when the product is Surveillance and the real big money clients are state actors and private mega-businesses that benefit from tracking rented vehicles?
  
  As we move closer to a full Service Contract economic model - one in which individuals don't really own anything and have to continuously pay to access even basic features of their home devices - I can see a lot of financial incentives in the system that preclude car dealers from leaving these features out.
  
  Imagine a bank that simply won't finance vehicles that can't be tracked. Or a rental company that won't add vehicles to their fleet without these always-on internet features. Or a car lot that uses continuous tracking to manage its inventory.
  
  Very quickly, the individual consumer becomes a secondary concern relative to these economies of scale.
- yOu ALwAyS HaVe A cHOiCe, sO It'S oKaY!
I read somewhere that the thought that you can vote with your dollars makes you feel good and empowered to make choices, but is overshadowed by the fact that doing so means that whomever has more dollars has more votes.

Regarding Congress, I was really hoping that this big fear of TicTok would result in some sort of GDPR type laws which empower the individuals to take control of our personal data, which could also be used to prevent our personal data from being used against us by foreign countries.
- You made the mistake of believing TikTok was anything more than a paid hit by other Social Media corporations.
TBH ending car dependency is a major part of any long term solutions. We should "regulate" this violent and planet wasting catastrophe out of existence replaced with rational and sustainable infrastructure.
- I'm all for reducing the number of cars on the road but IMO this is a poor attitude to have to a problem that exists right now and is ballooning out of control, but has a very easy solution.
  
  Moving away from cars will take a long, long time. Infrastructure doesn't come from nowhere, and some places are so sparsely populated that public transport can be a very difficult proposition, or even an impossibility. Those places in particular will be stuck with cars for a while. Banning predatory data gathering on cars can happen right now if there is the political will to do so.
  
  I know it's easy for some to say "well I don't care, fuck anybody who drives a car, they're evil and I don't like them. Why don't they simply be rich and buy a house in a city where public transport is usable?", but I think everybody has a right to privacy, and the default shouldn't be for our tools to spy on us and report it back to the OEMs. Particularly when a lot of car drivers don't have any choice but to drive!
  
  You can work on strengthening public transport while at the same time improving privacy laws for cars. It's not one or the other.
- Cars are far from the only product that is actively destroying individual privacy in the name of corporate profits
  
  Reducing the number of cars doesn't fix the root problem.
- Then your E-Bike is going to require an online sign in every time you want to use it.
The solution is regulations, strict regulations.

Regulation by whom? Dems are already deep in bed with the automotive industry and Republicans hate the government on a purely ideological level.

Who is supposed to write (much less enforce) these regulations? Nobody in government wants the job.
The solution is -besides regulations for that - have governments push for much MUCH more bicycle roads and same for public transportation. With great public transportation and bicycle roads, most people won't need cars to begin with.
- I mean, if we are imagining government doing it’s actual job, isn’t it easier to pass regulations then to change how North American cities work?
  
  Like I support walkable cities, I’m just convinced (majority of) regular people don’t actually want it.
- In the USA, that boat sailed long ago... most cities are too spread out to pedal anywhere

We cannot stop collecting data about you because collecting the datum that you want to stop having your data collected failed.

I wonder if the situation in Europe is different, where such bullshit is illegal.

Are any of you even able to afford new cars? Who the hell's buying this shit? I probably won't have a new car ever.

Also mind that soon these new cars will be used cars with the same bullshit.
Buying a new car never really made sense to me even when you could afford it. 2 - 3 year old model is effectively brand new but a lot cheaper. Why pay more if you can pay less?
- Mostly social signalling
- 2 - 3 year old model is effectively brand new but a lot cheaper.
  
  I've always heard this, but where is this actually true? When I bought a Camry like a decade ago, I could get a brand new one for $19.5k or used ones with 50k miles on them for....$18k. so yeah I paid the extra 1.5k to not have to deal with potential random shit.
  
  When my wife bought her car a few years ago it was a similar situation. The only used cars that were "a lot cheaper" had like 100k miles.
Total new vehicle sales has remained roughly static for a little less than two decades. So yes, people can afford new cars.
- For most, they can afford to finance them, but the rates aren’t looking too good lately
  
  https://www.statista.com/statistics/290673/auto-loan-rates-usa/
Yeah rates alone have made financing a new car pretty stupid. Save as much cash as possible and spend within your means
It made sense to me when I could take advantage of a tax credit for EVs in 2017. Now that car companies/dealerships simply jack up prices to eat that discount, it doesn't make sense even in that case.
Yes
People are buying new cars. I'm guessing it's mostly leasing.
People who have a college education and well paying jobs.
- ✅ well paying job
  
  ✅ Dropped out of college and went full time
- I have a college education and a well paying job the monthly payment on a new car has doubled since I bought my last one in 2020. No way am I buying a new car at these prices/rates.
- back in my day Spock had small hair
- With my last raise I'm over 130k a year and I still don't buy new cars. My 2010 Audi is still running just fine.

I feel like not buying a Honda would be a pretty good way to opt out. In fact since the majority of car manufacturers are doing this bullshit I feel like simply not purchasing a new car is a great way to opt out of this.

Plenty of older not smart cars that are perfectly usable or fairly easily restored no reason to go dropping the money on a brand new one that's not only a privacy disaster but a repairability disaster on top of it.

I think my favorite is how almost all new cars now come with a sealed transmission with absolutely no way to replace the fluid in it with the claims of it being a "lifetime fluid" there is no such thing as a transmission fluid that can last and do its job forever, what they mean by LifeTime fluid is that it will last long enough to satisfy the warranty. And what they have deemed should be the usable life of the car.

Shit I hadn't heard about that sealed transmission thing, that's fucked up. Transmission fluid replacement seemed pretty important on the maintenance schedule of all the cars I've had
- It's been happening for a long time, even some cars is far back as 2012 have a supposed lifetime fluid. Although they at least still have the drain bolt so that you can say yeah that's cute and do it anyway. But lately the drain bolt has gone away and they are completely sealed meaning you can't change it even if you want to
- I believe Honda started this in the early 2000s because they found that transmissions were compromised at earlier mileages at a much more frequent rate from leaks, bad fluid changes, or missing the intervals, than were actually failing from use. So they designed the cars for how they were actually being used and maintained. It’s kind of a non-issue unless you’ve got 300k+ miles on your transmission, at which point you’d expect to potentially replace it anyway.
Cars are just catching up to HVAC systems... In the last 3 years I've had to replace both inside and outside fan motors because their (maintenance free) bearings failed.

It's sad that you can't replace the infotainment unit in a new car with an aftermarket unit anymore. I imagine 10 years from now we'll have a fleet of cars with outdated infotainment systems that can't connect with whatever future version of bluetooth/carplay/android auto anymore. Imagine driving cars with giant but useless infotainment screens that can't do anything but playing mp3 off a USB stick because its outdated system can't connect to your new phone.

Car infotainment systems have always been outdated.
can’t do anything but playing mp3 off a USB stick

i'd rather that then spyware
- Playing MP3's off of a USB stick is literally all I do with my car's stereo, and in fact all I want it to do.
As long as it can play tapes, I'm okay. Still using a tape adapter to connect my mp3 player :)
- Haven't seen a new car that can play tapes in nearly 20 years. Got bad news, boss.
- I replaced my car's stereo with one that had an auxiliary 1/8" stereo jack.
I don't have to imagine, because I refuse to buy such type of car.
- What happens when all new cars do this and the older used cars dry up? We need laws to prevent this, but i just don't feel like that's going to happen unless China is the one doing the data collection.
Yeah, it was almost a rite of passage in my teen years - getting a decade-old used car and immediately replacing the crap factory system with some overmarketed, overpriced, but really cool kit. Of course nowadays the factory systems are better sounding at least, but you're spot on regarding the out dating of software and protocols.
It's even worse when you have a new-ish car that can handle any size USB stick, but will only load the first 8000 files it sees...
Yup, sadly you just have to replace the entire car. You certainly can't attach an entirely new system with speakers and everything to any surface inside the car, just impossible.

I do agree that it's not good, but it's also going to be far less of an issue than you think.
Who wants to buy / drive a 10 yo car though…I feel those get shipped to the 3rd world anyway where people have different needs than the latest connectivity
- LOLWUT, I only buy cars that old or older. Why would I spend an absolute fortune on a new-ish car that I barely use anyway when I can get a perfectly reliable older car fir a fraction of the price?
  
  My current car doesn’t have an infotainment system or any kind of connectivity. It has a 6 slot CD changer.
- Who wants to buy / drive a 10 yo car though…
  
  I do. Less built-in obsolescence, let spyware, less vendor lock-in. More durability. Ain't ditching my '97 Fiat anytime soon.
- Dude im driving a 33 year old car as my daily. Sub 100 thousand miles and gets better mileage than quite a few modern cars, gotta love government fleet cars. Anyways take your classist shit and shove it, just cause you can and your ilk can buy a new car every other year doesn't mean most people can, will, or want to.
- "Americans are keeping their vehicles longer than ever. According to new data from S&P Global Mobility, the average age of cars and light trucks on U.S. roads is a record 12.5 years this year. That's up three months over the 2022 analysis.May 18, 2023"
- Good troll.

I don't think I'm going to ever buy a car made after 2020. Maybe earlier. None of the new features really appeal to me, and there are a lot of things like this that actively turn me off from wanting a new car.

If they could just give me an electric version of a 1985 VW Golf I'd be happy as a clam. But they want to put me in some lumpy, heavy, clumsy CUV with tracking technology and all the touchscreens and I don't like it.

EV conversions are definitely a thing. And the Golf platform seems to actually be one of the most popular.

After a quick Google, it looks like there are even some premade kits for the Golf specifically, even with installation available. Although I can only find UK/EU links quickly. May be more built-it yourself in the US.

For those who haven't yet bought a Honda:

you have the option to buy from alternative brands to say fuck you using your wallet

They're basically all doing it, so make sure to research who is doing it the least.
- Or at this point, the one whose tracking is easiest and safest to avoid or circumvent.
- The only car makers that give data deletion options are Dacia Renault:
  
  Only two - Renault and Dacia, which are not sold in North America - offer drivers the option to have their data deleted
  
  Source: https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/09/06/wiretaps-on-wheels-drivers-warned-their-data-privacy-is-not-guaranteed-in-modern-vehicles

I’m never buying a Honda again after buying a 2018 Civic model. Less than 10k on it when I bought it and the A/C went out. There’s an issue with the condenser on the 2018/2019 Hondas. They offered to pay HALF of what it’d cost to fix - I’d still be out more than a thousand. And from research online, apparently the replacements tend to fail too.

Pretty much every time I see the same model I ask if the owner has AC. They always have the same problem. It’s going to be real wonderful driving when it gets to the 100’s this summer…

So we were told: "it may be covered by this recall, if it's the parts that are covered by the recall that are the cause of the loss of A/C. If those parts aren't the reason, it won't be covered, and the diagnostic to determine that would then be $1,000$."

So we have to take a $1,000 gamble to see if our 2018 car is covered under a fucking recall. Fuck Honda in the ass with a rusty anchor.
And yet the AC still blows cold in my 2004 Honda that's not ever had the AC serviced... Sad to hear Honda reliability is going downhill.
2018 civic owner here. Had the same issue with the A/C. Has anyone else had the paint flake off on the mirrors/door handles?
Damn that's unfortunate. I had my 2023 Honda for over a year and a bit over 20k miles. Been lucky so far that everything works fine, I've driven it up a mountain a couple times when I've gone camping too.
Simple, just buy a new Honda... Motorcycle /s
18 crv checking in. Have it now.

You can opt out by simply not buying one :)

Remember when gov't banned Furbies (sp?) in some places? Seems like they would make the same decision for a lot of people in important positions regarding their car purchasing.

I'm sure they'll have a separate government configuration. I'm pretty sure they already do for fleet vehicles.
- I guess when/if I buy another car, I'll look into gov't fleet auctions.

Pulling the fuse that includes OnStar at least keeps it from calling home. But there's usually some collateral damage.

What kind of damage?
- Personally I’d call that a safety issue. A few years ago my wife and I were driving a rental car that was rear ended on the highway by a drunk driver. The impact caved in the left rear wheel and spun us 360 degrees across 3 lanes of the highway. Within a few seconds of coming to a stop an OnStar person was talking to us, asking if we were ok and confirming our location.
  
  We had no clue ahead of time that the rental car had one of these services, but at that moment we were very happy it did. I honestly have no idea about the privacy ramifications, etc. but having been through that experience I’d think long and hard about disabling it outright. I do take my privacy seriously, but I’d have to weigh that against the safety of me & my family in that kind of situation and disable it only as an absolutely last resort… Just my own personal $0.02 on the matter.
- My car microphone stopped working

That one is easy: do not get a new Honda.

Don't buy a new car, there, FTFY.

I'm missing something. How is the data actually collected? How does it get out of my car? My car doesn't have any cellular features other than CarPlay. It has wifi, but I've never used it.

Potentially when you put it in for a service, could also be using bluetooth
- People take their cars to dealership garages? Fuck that noise lmao
It seems a lot of the new ones have a cellular modem. On the surface it's to let you remotely access the car or do a remote start. Even if you don't pay to subscribe and use it for your purposes they can utilize it to transfer out the data.
Cellular is usually how the vehicle provides Wi-Fi, it is effectively just a cell hotspot like you would get from a ohone carrier, but tied into the vehicle. So I think that would be the common way they get the data out.

Before I click in, does anyone have any background on the source link author org/individual, haven't seen this outlet before?

Robinhood launches site for new media arm
- Ahhh.... gross.
  
  Thanks.

I really do hope that this crap is handled better in EU. At least theoretically it should be.

Must be. Reading the article, most of the problems the writer was having would be highly illegal in the EU. A company like Honda would definitely be aware of that
- One can hope, right. I just stumbled across an article in local magazine about this same issue. Have to read it and report back.

The hero photo for the article shows a camera over a road that likely is likely running number plate recognition software...

Honestly I'd be more worried about where that data is going than the tracking software in your car. They've got the most critical information (where did you drive and when), and they've got it for every car instead of just Honda drivers.

This needs to be fixed with legislation, and it needs to be fixed actively. For example by getting rid of number plates entirely and replacing them with something like the transponders used in aircrafts and ships, but with an encrypted rolling code that only shares your data when authorised to do so (by the owner of the vehicle).

Apple "Find My" works like that... your location is encrypted, and it's uploaded without any identifying information. When the user brings up a map looking for their keys, that's the only time encryption keys are handed over allowing the already stored information to be accessed. The car version of that could be police asking you at every traffic stop to hit a button on your dashboard that unlocks your registration/insurance details so they can run a quick check against their outstanding warrant/etc database.

I was just thinking yesterday what car I would get if I had infinite money and while I'm sure such one probably exists I couldn't came up with one that I'd like better than my -07 Nissan Navara. I mean yeah I would ofcourse do a total overhaul on it and add a bunch of offroad accessories and such but the truck itself basically has everything I need and switching to a newer one would just add stuff I dont want.

I like cars and trucks but I'm extremely uninterested in most of the new ones. Something similar happened with them as with smartphones when they turned from tools into fashion accessories you use to show off to your friends. Can't we just have ones that are decent looking and come with the basic necesary features and nothing more? I want it simple, reliable and easy to fix. I don't want a computer on wheels.

Crap like this is why I ride a motorcycle.

Only one of my bikes even manages to have enough electronics in it to have a clock.

They will figure out a way to bundle it

Please, Toyota, don't do this. They refuse to go full out EV. Hopefully they too decide to keep some of these technologies away from their products.

I really don't understand why going EV seems to be synonymous with "collect all the data." The only differences should be in the drivetrain, and they don't need to collect any data to switch that to an electric motor from an ICE or Hydrid drive system.
- It's already happening anyways on non ev cars and has been for years. They all have monitors and tech in there.
- I suspect that it's because they are marketed to be as much of a tech gadget as transportation. An iPad on wheels. So they figure that they can slip in this crap.

You can rip out the cell connection

Not always.

Sometimes it's so integrated into the other systems there's no separate component to "rip out".

You may be able to pull the antenna cable and put a dummy on it (like used for testing radios). It'll absorb all the RF from the transmitter.
- Oh, good idea.
What if it has a redundant connection? At the end of the day you do not own the car
- Weird, I guess this title I registered at the dmv isn’t real.
- I’m sure it only has one. And I’m not sure you know how ownership works. It’s privacy I’m more concerned about.

c/fuckcars

Yeah. Fuck cars.

buy an old Honda LOL

Honestly old cars a great

The newer model CR-V doesn't need an app, it's just a toggle in the car settings. That icon at the top like the article shows is definitely annoying and I agree in calling it a dark pattern.

I know how to opt out! I can opt out of buying a honda!

The size of the title on that article is insane on a monitor.

Anyway.

Companies are quick to flaunt their privacy policies, but those amount to pages upon pages of legalese that leave even professionals stumped about what exactly car companies collect and where that information might go.

Does anyone remember that report about the university researchers who studied one of these smart thermostats and concluded that you would have to sign more than a thousand legal disclaimers to properly consent to have it in your home?

You could just not buy a smart car. There is a used market although it is a shrinking industry

It's not even limited to smart cars though. Yes used does let you a oid it, but it's not like this is just people buying the fancy trims either. Shit like this is working it's way down to the run of the mill standard cars year after year.
- All newer cars are smart cars

Solution: If it's spy on you then don't buy it.

Next problem.

Counterpoint: sometimes it's difficult to tell if something is surveilling you, especially for laypersons.
There isn't much of an alternative. All major manufacturers have been doing this for a while, we are approaching the point where you'll need to buy and maintain a classic car to avoid this type of data collection. Unfortunately, most people simply do not have the time, money, and expertise to do that. Nor should they have to.

Call me an asshole but I think giving driving habit information to insurers is great, so long as good habits are given discounts and bad habits are punished.

I'm one of those people who would love automatic enforcement of driving laws as well as user reportable incidents of other drivers (given you can provide footage of something you're reporting.)

If people don't like living under the law... maybe the law shouldn't exist. "That's the way it is" is a terrible excuse for fucking anything.

Oh, and make audit trails for this shit public record. Someone creating AI videos or fake reports? Punish that too. It'll never happen though. People want laws for others, not themselves.

who picks what habits are good and what are bad? who decides what happens to data beyond this? can you going to mcdonalds twice a day be shared with your health insurer? can you going to that rally be shared with the local police? with your landlord? are you comfortable with everyone knowing everything? because there's two things you do with data: analyze, and sell.
- I mean they use the data to decide what actions are high risk. Someone tailgating and tapping their brakes constantly is inherently less safe than someone leaving proper distance.
  
  Privacy theft, I get it. An opt out should always be available and easy to use.
  
  If you truly have an issue with insurance deciding what is or isn't safe there are organizations that can take over that such as ASTM or NFPA.
- can you going to mcdonalds twice a day be shared with your health insurer?
  
  You think this data isn't already shared?
no thanks. i hate the entire concept of insurance (especially lawfully forced insurance). there's no way i want them spying on me.

there are parts of the west where there's not another car for miles. why should i be punished for minor infractions on a lonely country road when i put no one but myself at risk? this is the same as getting ticketed by a camera for running a red light in the middle of nowhere.

if the law and technology becomes a tool of oppression, it no longer serves a useful purpose for mankind.
- Basic traffic liability insurance sorta makes sense - it'd suck you had your car wrecked by someone broke and were SOL.
Fucking hell, you're actually promoting a surveillance dystopia.

You're fucked.
- Without absolute transparency and total accountability it's going to be abused, but we already live in a surveillance dystopia. Have you ever seen what happens to whistle blowers today?
Yeah let's encourage citizens to report their neighbors for every legal offense, this kind of thing has always gone well throughout history

Say, I'm pretty sure I saw you invite a couple folks into your home the other day, and I never saw them come out. Oh would you look at that, the SS is here!

Similarities to fascism aside, this is still an awful idea. Have you ever dealt with automated rule enforcement? It's an awful way to enforce rules. But even if every single report had a human follow up on it, there's also massive, unprecedented privacy issues. You may be totally fine with my insurance company knowing where I am 24/7, but I sure as hell am not. I'm super not okay with a government (which we have) gaining free access to that information for anything they want (which they would). Oh hey, we're back to fascism
- I’m super not okay with a government (which we have) gaining free access to that information for anything they want (which they would)
  
  I fully believe they already have it.