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You don't own your vehicle anymore
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this post was submitted on 26 Apr 2026
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Fuck Cars
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Just get whatever car you want, disconnect the cell network antenna, and connect that wire through a resistor to ground. The car will forever think it's outside of cell signal range and will operate with none of the connectivity features, none of the spyware, none of the 'emergency' controls.
There's maybe still a bit of concern about your car preserving data on its internal storage that you'd rather it not preserve, but other than that, this is a simple fix that solves all the 'car is too high tech' issues. If you don't know how to do it yourself, I'm sure you can find some independent mechanics who will do it for you.
Ah congrats, not only have you voided your warranty, but your insurance company now refuses to insure your vehicle, and it cannot be legally driven.
That is where this is headed.
Where it's headed? Maybe...
But that's definitely not where it is now. A small, reversible modification like this won't void your warranty in any meaningful way (unless you then go in to make a warranty claim about your connectivity features not working). And no insurance company is going to care whether you've disconnected the internet connection antenna -- even if they wanted to ... how would they know?
Insurance wants the data so they can use it jack your rates up and have even more excuses to not cover claims.
The insurance companies already have dongles that "give you a discount" (read: price-gouge anyone not using them) for snooping on your driving. I'm sure they're very excited for that functionality to be built into all cars so they have an excuse to make it mandatory for providing coverage.
There's probably a fuse you could just pull instead that shuts down that entire system
Possibly... But it's likely that the internet modem is integrated together with the car's radio head unit, or at least pulls power through the same fuse. Since it's fairly unlikely that they have a single fuse that only powers the cell connection, the fuse-pulling approach is likely to disable other things as well, possibly some pretty important things.
Going after the antenna wire ensures that you only disable the internet connection, nothing else.
I'm doing both. I want these systems totally offline. If I could, I'd tear them the f out of the car entirely. This shit is evil.