this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2025
365 points (99.2% liked)
Privacy
42687 readers
579 users here now
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Most modern cars are SIM-enabled and are constantly sending data back to the mothership. But even those that aren't will still collect data locally and that data will be collected when you send the car to an "official/licenced/authorized" repair shop.
I have heard firsthand that investigators just go for the car instead of the phone since it is way easier to get data from the car.
Earlier this year during the CCC security conference it was revealed that the tracking info of 800k Volkswagen cars was publicly accessible...
The talk is available in English as well I believe: https://media.ccc.de/v/38c3-wir-wissen-wo-dein-auto-steht-volksdaten-von-volkswagen
I hate this.
I'm still driving a '99 vehicle and the most advanced thing about it are the power windows. I dread upgrading to a vehicle that can break in so many new ways. I hate that everything has touch screens and the software on many is awful and if it breaks, surprise, you have no music in your car now.
Those still have an ECU that stores most of the same data. It knows you speed, it knows how hard you brake, etc. anything with an OBD will store data. And that’s carssince the 70s
You’ll be surprised, they take snapshots at certain points. In a collision all vehicles will store last 5 or so seconds of data, speed, see if brakes are engaged, stuff like that, it’s all used in collision investigations. There’s not a single car I think that’s doesn’t do this. As I said, it’s in some form, but your vehicle does know if you’ve sped if it has an obd on it.
What do you think basic OBD stuff is? It’s all that information and that’s used to see if anything’s wrong with the vehicle.
No, even ODB from the 70s records you max reached speed, if you’ve hit the governer/rev limiter and how many times.
It’s nothing modern, modern just does it more frequent, more situations, more information, more data points, and mandatory black boxes.
And many vehicles from 2000 onwards have dedicated EDR boxes, what make and model and trim is your 2012?
So sounds like you don’t quite know what’s going on under your hood there ;)
So where's the directory of where to find the transmitter/SIM in specific vehicles?
You can look this up for your model. When I was looking this, there was a youtube video showing how to physically renove chevy's onstar thing in the car
or any repair show that uses the brand specific diagnostic software, pirated or not