Good point, and a good thing to add to things to consider. Thank you.

I was more thinking along the lines of the different classes of warrantable repairs and different classes of recalls.

You could absolutely have a recall pertinent to your vehicle that turns out to be voluntary and the automaker refuses to honor it if that system has been deactivated, tampered with, or modified.

I wanted to make it particularly clear that some safety features are non-negotiable if you buy a new car from a dealer because the manufacturer is required by law to include them. But some people do believe that more safety features are required by law than actually are and even in the event that some of them are telemetry isn’t, and may be disabled in some instance depending on the vehicle.

I personally am willing to fix my older car until it dies and I can’t anymore over buying a brand new one but I’ve also never bought a brand new car in my life. I understand that my approach is possibly prohibitively expensive for quite a lot of people.

Anyway, I hope you find what you’re looking for.

If you live in the USA:

Despite all of the arising automobile safety technologies, there are just a few that are required by regulations. These mandated safety functions consist of Seatbelts, Airbags, LATCH child safety seat system, Tire-Pressure Display, Electronic Stability Control, and Backup Cameras. All-new vehicles will certainly have that tech and in addition, the NHTSA recommends the following Motorist Assistance Technologies:

FWD Crash Warning

Automatic Emergency Situation Braking

Lane Departure Warning

Whether you can ask the dealer to turn them off is dependent entirely on whether the manufacturer will allow them to do that. Generally the manufacturer is the one who allows the dealer access to scan tool tech that would be able to do this and what access they have varies by manufacturer.

There are things you can potentially do yourself including pulling fuses or relays (where applicable), disconnecting antennas (depending on your level of skill to get access), and asking an aftermarket shop to physically disable certain systems.

The main problem with this is, 1. It could void your warranty which may mean you aren’t eligible for some warrantable repairs including but not limited to recalls. 2. You could potentially do some damage to systems yourself by accident that you would be on the hook for. 3. You will likely lose other features you paid for. This is of course dependent on how the manufacturer integrated the systems you want to remove or disable.

It may be a better idea to see what options you have to avoid paying for those optional features and make your decision based on what manufacturers allow you to remove them when you order the vehicle. This may be better for you than trying to drive a dealer vehicle off the lot. It will take more time though.

I think if I were you and I had to have a newer car I would try to buy a used car that doesn’t have these features you don’t want.

I had this problem because the app does a sanity check between your phone clock and your “location”. I changed the clock to match my VPN locale and then worked backward from there.

If you can set the VPN to a place in the same time zone but far outside your actual locale that may work.

I don’t know for certain that this will help but it’s worth a shot.

Step 3: Stop using android unless it’s Graphene or something like it that’s de-googled. Because a lot of Google’s tracking is done through the play store.

So, here’s the crux of the problem.

The internet as it is now and as it has existed for the vast majority of its life is an ad supported system.

The ad money is drying up because of several things:

AI is taking away click throughs to websites meaning they don’t get ad click throughs or impressions. They run ads to keep the lights on and they are being starved of the engagement that ads pay for.

People have less spending power than they have ever had. Ads don’t mean anything if people can’t afford products.

There is a pivot to trying to get rich people to buy goods and services but even though they have most of the wealth they don’t need most goods and services. This means the best way to get them to spend money is to have them invest to grow that money.

Ad companies require people to buy the goods and services that they are advertising in order to continue to pay for ads and ad aggregation.

A large subset of the populace really does hate ads and also wants things for free. They do not want to be told that nothing is free and ads are how a lot of the internet makes money.

The alternative to ad supported internet is data supported internet but people really really hate data brokers and data brokers mainly sell or offer up the use of data to three groups. Other data brokers/ad aggregators, the government/military industrial complex, and criminals.

So naturally companies that used to sustain themselves on ad aggregation now do so by pursuing government contracts. Because the line must go up.

I was thinking more along the lines of either obscuring system clock or changing it entirely as far as the apps or web browser can see. Say, making it so that it matches the time zone of your VPN.

I have a question about hiding system clock information from all browsers as well. Because this is a sanity check more and more apps and browsers are doing to disuade people from using a VPN.

I’m shocked. Shocked.

Of Bitwarden.

For a small window of time if you downloaded an update it had malware. It also looks like a lot of those downloads were bot downloads. There is no evidence that vaults have been compromised.

In a post on X, JFrog said the rogue version of the package “steals GitHub/npm tokens, .ssh, .env, shell history, GitHub Actions and cloud secrets, then exfiltrates the data to private domains and as GitHub commits.”

ROFL. Man Spez is stupid.

Privacy ≠ Anonymity.

They are not the same thing, and proton are very transparent about what they will and won’t do in this regard.

It’s likely that Apple already has age data on you because they collect all kinds of data including payment details from you. If you use any paid apple service (pay for apps on the app store, pay for music, or cloud services, use the air tags etc), it’s likely they already know your age.

The reason to be worried about this isn’t because now apple has this information, but because of the progression of this information being demanded, shared, and hoarded by less secure age verification services.

Anyone hoarding personal identifying information is a target for criminal enterprises that want that information.

Apple can be hacked, but you have to evaluate your threat model and what information you’ve already given them, as well as what information is already out there on the internet about you.

So, whether they store the information or not, the information may not be encrypted while being processed (lots of IoT tech doesn’t encrypt data streams, and some of them don’t even have a firewall between them and the internet).

There’s no good reason for them to need Internet access to sweep or mop your house.

Text to speech?

I’ve never been comfortable with ring cameras specifically because even if it isn’t a tool to be harnessed by the state it’s still a tool to be harnessed by anyone holding a grudge. The vast majority of IoT users don’t know the basics of securing their network or their cameras. They connect things to the internet for the convenience and that’s it. And the cameras pick up the comings and goings of people who don’t really have the ability to not consent to having someone record when they leave their house or return to it. My neighbor doesn’t need that information. And why yes they could sit in their house and watch at all hours through the curtains, there would still be a physical limit to what they could see.

For the same reason I don’t want drones constantly surveiling my home, I don’t want camera footage I have no access to but that can be used against me by someone who doesn’t like how I rake the leaves in my driveway.

Anyone who’s been in a dispute with a neighbor who’s got a ring camera knows this struggle. And the advice you get, by and large is to get one of your own. No thanks.

Yeah. Looks like RootmyTV is only for older models of LG TVs and that’s kind of sad.

I haven’t but that’s probably because I don’t use it to do anything that would require that. Like. Everything (switching inputs, volume etc) is handled by my receiver. The devices that are hooked up to the receiver all have their settings on device.

It may also depend on what firmware your TV came with and what model you have?

Sorry I can’t be more help.

Interesting. But my house basically is a faraday cage. I have no signal outside it from my wifi or any of the others because of the way they were constructed. I have to have wifi repeaters indoors and a mobile repeater setup to get cell coverage inside.

So I guess I’m lucky in that respect.

But all in all this is good information for people to know including me. Thanks for that.