Mozilla Foundation did a deep dive into this. And the results where abysmal. The only brands not completely horrifying where Renault/Dacia because they are European and only serve the European market so they have to follow GDPR.

The problem with the "just buy old cars" is that I want a used electric car for like $10k.

We need a wiki of EVs that.has a section on each model enumerating which components are used to spy on you and videos showing how to neuter them.

Remove the cellular modem.

ITT people are all dismissive because you can't actually be anonymous on the road (license plates, speed cameras...), but, honestly, I just want a car that doesn't listen in on my conversations, sell my data to brokers, require any passanger to accept the privacy policy, or record the times I have sex (jk it won't be able to if I don't have any)

It's possible to get cars as new as 2019 where you can just pull a fuse. But it starts to get tricky.

Example my C7 Vette it only took about that (it was a bit of an ordeal to not brick the car) but it's not connected to shit anymore.

Buy an electric bicycle and use the money you would have spent on a car to run for a seat for local office on the platform to improve local transit infrastructure

I’ve got a 2009 dumb car and I am babying it because I dread having to try to buy a new to me car that isn’t full of telemetrics and other modern car garbage.

Depending on the car you might be able to physically disable telemetry. Here are some thoughts/ideas I've been collecting:

• Hit "SOS" button and opt-out of all services through customer service. This of course requires trusting the company to actually do it.
  • It's possible that the info could be stored locally and then uploaded when it gets serviced though
• Remove the fuse to the modem/data communication module (DCM)
• Disconnect wiring to the LTE antennas
• A number of people have mentioned that they can get the dealer to disconnect the telemetry as a precondition to buying. For instance, here.
• Jump the data communication module (DCM) cable with a ~$70 dongle to bypass just the telematics components
• Disconnect the DCM cable, which will likely gimp the infotainment if not other systems, or remove the entire DCM unit

I don't recall what kind of car it was, but there was one that saved the phone number associated with any phone that connected via Bluetooth.

While I don't think it's likely as a way to trick people to connecting to get their phone number, it was a rental car which opened them up to impersonation scams. Knowing they just rented from the company and where in the city provides quite a bit of information on you.

As long as data harvesting is legal and profitable, privacy will be a cat and mouse game. Gotta wonder how much capital and human effort is invested into all these anti-consumer innovations.

I plan to buy 2003 Skoda Octavia for obvious reasons or some car with automatic transmission.

Definitely keeping me far away from upgrading, newest vehicle is an early 2000s Corolla and still does 40mpg.

Honestly with how cheap and easy it is to fix at home, barring safety improvements I really don't see a point in upgrading. Infotainment is just another component that will eventually go obsolete like the ones from ~2010 that are dog slow and a pain to go aftermarket on.

I don't have any tips, but I wish I did. My car's just over a year old and I don't even like driving it since I found out it's spying on me all the time. The 'infotainment' system is also integrated with everything in the vehicle so turning it off isn't an option. I really like the car, but I feel like privacy is something that shouldn't have to be a consideration when buying a vehicle. I'm just about positive there's not a new vehicle available in the US market without one of these things in it unless you're buying fleet vehicles.

I did not watch the mentioned video so I am not sure if what I am about to mention is discussed there or not. Also, sorry for the really long reply!

I am not aware of any available truly privacy respecting, modern cars. However, assuming theat you obtain one or you can do things like physically disconnect/remove all wireless connectivity from the car to make it as private/secure as possible, there still is little you can do to be truly anonymous.

Your car likely has a VIN and license plate as well as a vehicle registration. Assuming you legally obtained the vehicle and did not take any preventative measures prior to purchasing the car, those pieces of information will be tied back to you and your home address (or at least someone closely connected to you). You would need to initially obtain the vehicle via a compsy/LLC/partnership/etc. as the owner/renter/leasee of the vehicle and an address not associated to you. Additionally, you would need to find some means of avoiding or limiting the additional information connected to you that is likely required to obtain the vehicle like car insurance and your drivers license.

Additionally, any work that certain mechanics perform may be shared (either directly or indirectly) with data brokers - even just routine maintenance like an oil change or alignment. Hopefully you didn't use your credit card, loyalty rewards program, etc. when you had any work done!

There is also CCTV, security cameras, and other video recorders that are nearly impossible to avoid. Given enough time/resources and maybe a little bit of information, your car could be tracked from its origin to destination locations. This location history can be used to identify you as the owner (or at least driver/passenger) of the car. Unless your car never leaves your garage, you can almost guarantee that your car is on some Ring camera, street camera, etc.

Furthermore, anything special or different about your car (custom decal, unusual window tinting, funny bumper sticker, uncommon color for the car, uncommon trim/package for the car, dented bumper, fancy rims, replaced tires, specific location of toll reader placement on the windshield, something hanging from your rear mirror, etc.) all help identify your car. The make/model and year of your car can also be used to identify your car if its not a common car in the area. These identifiers can be used to help track your car via the video feeds mentioned above.

Then there are license plate readers which are only slightly easier to avoid than the video recordings. Permanent, stationary license plate readers can be found on various public roads and parking lots. There are also people who drive around with license plate readers as part of their job for insurance/repossession purposes. You may be able to use some sort of cover over your license plate(s) to hinder the ability of license plate readers to capture your plate number, but that could be used to help identify your car in video feeds/recordings.

I was driving in a rented car and just decided to start randomly singing and... yeah, the car's AI asked me to repeat.

Cars have had GPS capable black boxes for a long time. They claim it is for the same reason as airplane black boxes, but I call bullshit on that.

Should be quite easy to remove any WiFi/cellular/satellite antennas from the car's computer. (Might be trace/chip antennas, so make sure to get those). If you're extra paranoid, get the GPS antenna too, so it can't simply record data indefinitely.

Might take a few hours to go through the car to make sure you get everything, but you won't be limited to super old cars.

Holding onto my 2016 van with zero telemetry for as long as possible.

Are there any write-ups on the situation in Europe under GDPR-legislation? Mostly I read about the US-situation which seems like the wild west, but I can't imagine that it is perfectly fine in the EU either even if you opt-out of using their apps etc.

Also ford recently redesigned their app so the users have to use built in google maps in order to track their car.