Spying on you?

[reissue848]

I don't normally post in threads and made an account just to contribute here and I thank you folks for providing this information about how to remove the telematics module. I was planning to get a type R but have avoided getting a new car for a long time because of the proliferation of these things. In my opinion everyone should remove the TCU from their car or disable it in some way.

Sorry for the wall of text but some more details about what a TCU enables from a car and manufacturer perspective seems quite relevant in this thread.

Aside from just primary driving data people generally have no idea what is being taken from them. Two major concerns are the breadth of manufacturer license agreements and what can be deduced from that information.

License agreements are usually drafted by manufacturers and others with generally vague and overbroad categories to protect themselves from legal claims. This enables them to collect almost anything without recourse.

For example:

They use other cheeky little tactics to gloss over the amount of data they collect, like this Easter egg we found in Honda’s privacy policy. At the end of a long list of categories of personal information they collect, they put “Personal information as described in Cal. Civ. Code § 1798.80(e).” Huh? It turns out that that’s short for just about anything that “identifies, relates to, describes, or is capable of being associated with a particular individual.” Yowza!

(e) “Personal information” means any information that identifies, relates to, describes, or is capable of being associated with, a particular individual, including, but not limited to, his or her name, signature, social security number, physical characteristics or description, address, telephone number, passport number, driver’s license or state identification card number, insurance policy number, education, employment, employment history, bank account number, credit card number, debit card number, or any other financial information, medical information, or health insurance information. “Personal information” does not include publicly available information that is lawfully made available to the general public from federal, state, or local government records.

What data your car collects from you.

Then there is the data that actually gets collected. The Markup article below has a link to a sheet with about 400 (formerly 660) individual data points that can be collected from various vehicles. This can include obvious things like car tire pressure or maintenance status but can also include things such as the weight of someone in a seat (provided via SRS airbag seat sensors to detect children and turn off the airbags). When aggregated this data can provide unique user profiles that can identify who was in the car for any given situation. When combined with other things such as trip and location data can this can reveal things like HIPPA protected health information etc.

Bennett Cyphers, a staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said, “The more different ways you’re being measured in your vehicle, the more likely it is that someone can take a stream of data and use the characteristics of all of those different data points to fingerprint a particular user or a particular vehicle.

The Markup: What data is being collected

You should also know that you likely have no 4th amendment protection for any data that the car takes due to various legal doctrines (e.g. third-party doctrine).

This also says nothing about the risk of the data being taken by bad actors through hacks or negligent disclosures. Based on standard telematics information someone could easily build a type of spear phishing or impersonation scam that would be hard to detect until after the scam. Or they could simply plan a robbery at your house with high confidence that you wont be there to stop them and what they are likely to be able to steal.


Here are some other links on the topic:

Mozilla: Cars are the worst privacy product
Mozilla: What data your car can take from you
EFF: how to figure out what your car knows about you
VPR: Find out what your car takes
Mozilla: Honda Specific Information

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[Superhatch]

Another one removed!

 

[jtlctr]

This will be one of the first things I do when my car comes out of storage.

 

[Superhatch]

Also a reminder to set the apps you use in car play/android auto to 'ask not to track' otherwise you're still sending a lot of data that could be used for the same thing the auto mfgs. were doing.

 

[m3bs]

Any reason to physically remove the TCU vs simply unplugging it? Or is just easier to unplug with it pulled out?

 

[reissue848]

Any reason to physically remove the TCU vs simply unplugging it? Or is just easier to unplug with it pulled out?

I think they are effectively the same. Unless you think someone could plug it back in without you noticing.

I have no clue about how the audio and TCU software functions specifically in terms of caching data. But we do know that it appears to only be a modem for data collected on the YB-CAN bus by the audio unit. Thus its not the TCU that is collecting the data, its the audio unit.

I also would bet that normal interruptions in cell service are anticipated by the manufacturer. People do drive in areas with no coverage and can go into above or underground parking without coverage on a regular basis. Thus, I would expect it has some ability to cache data and send it when the service comes back up. Since that data could be just text tables, at a minimum, it doesn't take much space. Additionally, multiple hundreds of Gigabytes of micro SD size storage is dirt cheap I would imagine it could store several months of daily driving data before filling up if that is all it is.

With that in mind I would hate for a service tech to just go plug it in during a normal service thinking he is doing you a favor and then you just wasted months of effort, that could have been avoided, if it uploads gigabytes of cached data. You can minimize that risk a lot by just removing it from the car as I don't think a tech is going to just go get another TCU and install it without you buying it. So I would just remove it altogether.

 

[reissue848]

Plenty of reading and even more if one cares to dig into the Kyocera AL-T52V1-1 telematics module.

Once the weather warms up, I'm going to see if I can remove the TCU from the car to yank out the transceiver antennas.

There is not much beyond technical specifications that I was able to find for this item. Since its basically just a modem I think the better research would be into exactly what the audio unit is aggregating before it sends it to the TCU. I also saw a mention of a body control module that links to the bumper sensors and blind spot sensors. That may also be the central unit for aggregating sensor inputs.

FCC ID JOYDA39
DA39.User-Guide

 

[blueroadster]

Yea, the Kyocera AL-T52V1-1 is the "TEL/GNSS Module (Network Access Device)" chipset installed on the TCU circuit board. No need to research the NAD once the TCU is removed.

The audio unit is the central brain where most everything is collected and stored from other control units via the CAN bus as well as any external device ever connected to the vehicle. Another common name for it is an infotainment system. The TCU simply provides a direct and persistent cellular communications link for data to be transmitted from the infotainment system. Removal of the TCU should be a must although data will still be collected and stored within the infotainment system itself. It will also try to look for other connected devices to use as an backup communications link.

As for connecting your smartphone to the vehicle...Not a good idea IMHO. Never trust software options to turn off certain features that only the user can see. Selecting "Ask App Not to Track" is a good recommendation but keep in mind that you are just "Asking" for it to do so. Even if the app truly honored not tracking, it can still pull other non-tracking related data from your phone (i.e., phonebook, call records, photos, text messages, etc.). Heck, even with out of the box with no additional apps installed, Google and Apple can still track you.

Assuming one does not connect an external device that includes other communication options, then extraction of vehicle data stored within the infotainment system would require physical access. Your local Honda dealer has the hardware to communicate with all control units on the vehicle via the i-HDS Diagnostic Software and compatible hardware device for Honda and Acura vehicles.

https://honda.oemdtc.com/342/i-hds-diagnostic-software-and-j2534-reprogramming-software

For cross-platform infotainment system vehicle forensics, Berla iVE leads that particular technological space:

https://berla.co/

 

[blueroadster]

I also would bet that normal interruptions in cell service are anticipated by the manufacturer. People do drive in areas with no coverage and can go into above or underground parking without coverage on a regular basis. Thus, I would expect it has some ability to cache data and send it when the service comes back up. Since that data could be just text tables, at a minimum, it doesn't take much space. Additionally, multiple hundreds of Gigabytes of micro SD size storage is dirt cheap I would imagine it could store several months of daily driving data before filling up if that is all it is.

Yes, pretty much universal in the sense that data is cached in the event of service connectivity interruptions; control units and the infotainment system are still communicating with each other. Vehicle data collected from the various control units is also recorded every second or so as individual delimited text files stored within a folder-based structure in the infotainment system.

 

[Superhatch]

As for connecting your smartphone to the vehicle...Not a good idea IMHO.

By connecting do you mean using car play/android or letting the car use your phone as a hotspot?

 

[blueroadster]

By connecting do you mean using car play/android or letting the car use your phone as a hotspot?

Anytime you connect your smartphone, the vehicle will pull data from it. The connection would also provide the vehicle with an alternative communications link to use if the smartphone has service.

Google and/or Apple are already tracking your smartphone. Connecting it to your vehicle enables additional information that can be collected. Google provides a way where you can see, manage, and delete information that they have collected from your account across various devices. Visit:

https://takeout.google.com/

If you still want to connect a smartphone to the vehicle, I would only do that if:

• the device was scrubbed of your personal information (e.g., contact list, call records, text messages, etc.) so none of that stuff can be copied over to the infotainment system;
• you don't use the device to logon to any cloud account or are using a degoogled phone; and
• the smartphone is not activated and SIM card has been removed.

Devices that connect via cellular or satellite can be easily geolocated and tracked because the device itself has a unique MAC/IMEI and SIM card that contains the IMSI for network registration and connectivity (e-SIM is a little different). A smartphone with no SIM cannot connect via cellular but WiFi is an alternative.

If you want in-car WiFi across devices, instead of using one device as a Hotspot, you are better off using a portable cellular router such as GL.iNet. Take the SIM out of your smartphone and plug it into the cellular router. The router will then register and connect with cell towers where you can then turn on its WiFi for connecting other device(s). Cell carriers will see that you are using a cellular router and will likely throttle its connection. Some cellular routers offer the ability to change their configuration settings for the device to "identify" as whatever you would like for it to "identify" as although doing something like that is a gray area (i.e., not "technically" legal).

Long message but in any event, your personal information is constantly being collected, used, and sold. It is very difficult to disconnect from the Matrix and you'll go nuts trying to do so. The most one can do is simply learn about what is being collected and make an informed decision on what they decide to live with. For me, goodbye TCU. On the other hand, I do enjoy free meals/desserts throughout the year from local restaurants by opting-in to their birthday club (every month is my birthday at a different restaurant).

 

[jtlctr]

I hate all this Big Brother crap, but I realize the phone is constantly tracking/collecting. My main concern in the car is the tracking of driving habits and relaying that to the insurance industry, etc. Hopefully removal of the TCU solves that problem.

My father is 78 and he REALLY hates the digital spying. Last weekend he, his girlfriend, and I went to northern NY to visit family. We passed by the olympic training center/ski jump in Lake Placid on our way. He was not very happy about the ads for Lake Placid olympic tourism that showed up on his computer when he got home. I have to show him how to turn off all the tracking stuff on his phone (to whatever extent possible).

 

[Nanook]

I pulled mine today.

 

[Nanook]

Interestingly I got an email from Honda yesterday about what to do about being in a collision. Touting the fact that Honda part are best. I found it very odd this occurred mere days after I removed the TCU.

 

[jtlctr]

Interestingly I got an email from Honda yesterday about what to do about being in a collision. Touting the fact that Honda part are best. I found it very odd this occurred mere days after I removed the TCU.

I received the same email and I haven’t yet removed my TCU. The battery has been disconnected for months because the car is in storage. Maybe that had the same effect if it’s not communicating with Honda, but more likely they just sent a mass email to Honda owners.

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