Owners may want to disable this in hardware rather than relying on a sketchy opt-out mechanism. The relevant part is the "data communications module". It has an LTE modem and a backup battery, so it's able to transmit even if the car battery is disconnected. It requires a little bit of dashboard disassembly to access. You can either remove it or disconnect the LTE and GPS antennas. Toyota has technical documents available for $25 at https://techinfo.toyota.com.
It would be great if there was some website that collected all the detailed instructions for removing the spy devices from different car models.
do you know if there are easy equivalents for other car brands? when I bought my new car in 2019 I also wanted to disable any built in GPS/Data connection but it was hard to find any instruction if nobody else had done it or documented it yet. subaru if you happen to know!
edit:
hah, should have just googled it first. looks like people are trying it out more now
Do you have a source for it being illegal for an owner to disable it on their own vehicle? Your link talks about it being required in new cars but I didn't see anything that said you couldn't deactivate it.
ecall is a functional safety feature of your vehicle, which, like tire pressure sensors or abs or ESR or whathaveyou has been prescribed to save human life's. it only phones home, so the logic, in case of a severe accident. automatic registry of any sim card with mobile network towers is just a technicality, according to that logic.
ecall is a prescribed feature for homologation (German: Typzulassung). if you manipulate a homologation relevant feature of the vehicle, your general operating license becomes void ("allgemeine Betriebserlaubnis erlischt")
in other words: you can sure disable it on your own car --- but that car in that moment loses insurance and you're no longer allowed to operate it on the road, except to bring it to the workshop.
that's the mechanics of "homologation" and "general operating license", i.e. the mechanics of road safe vehicles.
now, are you looking for a source of these mechanics? or a source for where ecall is listed as generic mandatory feature?
In many cases this isn’t viable. On my car for for instance - a 2016 Subaru - removing the telematics module also disables all front speakers because the audio signal is routed through it.
1. Cost. I'd rather not pay for hardware and software I won't use.
2. Environmental impact. Unused and unwanted hardware is waste.
3. Unauthorized users connecting to WiFi. TVs are often in common areas. The settings menus have no authentication. So an unauthorized user might connect the TV to a WiFi network.
4. Automatic WiFi connections. TVs might connect to open or partnered WiFi networks without telling the user. Hard to know without an audit.
5. Accidental WiFi connections. Settings menus might be unintuitive (or deceptive) enough to trick users into joining WiFi networks accidentally.
6. Future data leaks. TVs might be recording data and saving it to internal storage. The next owner of the TV could connect it to a network, and years of stored data would be leaked. Again, hard to know without an audit.
> Cost. I'd rather not pay for hardware and software I won't use.
There is no more a “smart TV tax” than a “Windows tax”. Smart TV manufactures make money via selling user data that more than offsets the $20 BOM for the smart TV components just like computer OEMs make money installing Windows crapware.
> Environmental impact. Unused and unwanted hardware is waste.
What unused hardware? When the built in smarts go obsolete, you buy an external device and connect.
> Unauthorized users connecting to WiFi. TVs are often in common areas. The settings menus have no authentication. So an unauthorized user might connect the TV to a WiFi network
That’s true and it was happening a lot when we first moved into our condotel (condo that’s rented out like a hotel when we aren’t there and we get half the proceeds) and when we stay in hotels. I bought a wifi to wifi bridge to have a private network.
Basically most of your criticism is resolved if you never use the wifi to begin with, and all apply to any hypothetical wifi enabled device you connect to a dumb TV, anyway.
Please, stop using phone numbers. There is no reliable way to hold a phone number. The messaging protocols are insecure. If your service uses phone numbers or SMS, that means it's not secure or reliable.
Not only that, I don't want any service that I use tied to a phone number. Partially for the reasons you listed, but also because there are better alternatives; email, authenticator apps, physical keys, cards, etc.
I hate looking at my phone. I hate using my phone. I don't want to have even more reasons to keep my phone charged and in my hand. Phones suck.
Well sure, but does it require me to use my phone at some point in the process of account creation? That's the part I have an issue with.
I had assumed that there would be an alternative to access the service post-creation. My gripe is more with the fact that a phone is a requirement at any point.
To put it another way: imagine I had to send a letter to Signal's HQ in order to make an account. Now, obviously I'm not going to be sending and receiving letters constantly to/from Signal, but the mere fact that writing and sending a letter would be a requirement as part of the process would be at the users personal detriment. That's the point I was trying to get at - that it is forcing the user into a specific method which is undesired, arbitrary, and frustratingly unnecessary.
Yeah agreed, as I mentioned elsewhere I don't see why phone number should be required. It's a good default (esp. for non-technical users) to use phone number and contacts (= "social network"), but I really don't see what the problem is with using email or just username/password combo and then adding contacts manually from wherever. Why not have that option? Most people would likely still use their phone number for this.
Yes, I'm aware the desktop app is made with Electron. So what? I keep it running almost all the time and I've never had any performance issues with it.
Well, it's slow, it has awful accessibility, you can't create accounts from a computer, you will have performance issues with it if you need the resources for something else.
I wonder how hard it would be to have my personal residence classified as one of these protected places. Incorporate some kind of business or non-profit, make sure it shows up the right way in Google Maps, then enjoy freedom from Google surveillance.
I lived to my mid-30s before I ever carried a mobile phone. In that time I do not recall ever needing to call 911 on a pay phone. How often has a mobile phone helped you in an emergency? For me, never. I think this is one of those easy-to-imagine-but-in-reality-rarely-happens justifications.
The local university here has these emergency call-for-help stations all over campus. They have a blue light on top so they are easy to find especially at night. A couple of years ago there was a little feature story in the newspaper about how they had never--not once--been used in a real emergency. But the university did not want to take them down because they provided a feeling of security.
> A couple of years ago there was a little feature story in the newspaper about how they had never--not once--been used in a real emergency. But the university did not want to take them down because they provided a feeling of security.
How many real emergencies occurred near one of these boxes?
Probably none, if they were never used. Again supporting the idea that they are better at creating a feeling of security than actually making any difference.
Maybe no emergencies occurred because of the presence of these emergency call stations. (At least those perpetrated by other people, i.e. assaults, thefts, etc.—I presume potential perpetrators would be discouraged by the presence of these call stations.)
Creating a feeling of security is as important as creating security—you need both.
Telephone numbers are fundamentally incompatible with privacy. Signal's leadership knows this, but they don't appear to care.