I don’t know what your particular situation is but if you’re just using it on computers you could use LUKS or BitLocker or FileVault. Then if you want to wipe it, you only need to destroy the key and the data is rendered effectively gone.

To be fair, I bet some percentage of those that don’t use an ad blocker ARE using something like no script and just don’t need one as a result.

There’s some inherent risk in the ad blocker as well, though. If it’s an extension, you’re trusting that this thing you installed, that can read and modify every website you visit, isn’t going to do anything sneaky. Yes, maybe it’s open source, but every once in a while something sneaks into open source projects, too. It will get caught, but it could be after the damage is done.

I mean, I use an ad blocker. But I don’t think it’s unreasonable to value security and not use one.

It’s a bit of both! Certain commands to the car can be done locally via Bluetooth OR via Tesla servers. The tricky bit is that status always comes from the server. If you are on a VPN that is blocked (like I use NordVPN and it is often blocked) then the app can’t get status and as long as it can’t get status it may not even try a local command. It’s unclear to me under what circumstances it does local vs cloud commands, and it may have to do with a Bluetooth LE connection that you can’t really control.

When you don’t have service, or you’re on VPN, it may be worthwhile to try disabling and reenabling Bluetooth. I have had success with this before. If you’re using android, it seems like the widget also uses Bluetooth, so you could try adding the widget to your home screen and using that. You can also try setting the Tesla app to not be power controlled, so it never gets closed.

Either way, there’s a definite engineering problem here that feels like it should be fixed by Tesla. But I can at least confirm that, even in situations with zero connectivity, you should be able to perform basic commands like unlock and open trunk without data service.

There can be other servers and apps, for example Samsung has their own app. It’s hard for me to track down details about how they interoperate but it appears that the various services need to agree to work with one another, so I don’t think just anyone can create an RCS app and infrastructure and have it work with Google’s and Samsung’s. However, I imagine Apple is fully capable of it and would be surprised if iPhone RCS wasn’t going through Apples network.

Level 5: Handle cookies, a local key value store, and a local database internally in a secure way.

Level 6: If you can’t watch Netflix on your browser it’s probably a non-starter for some users so better figure out a way to include DRM compatibility. But if you do it, the privacy minded will get really upset, so ideally you’d figure out a way to do it in some way that can be easily turned off or removed.

Level 7: alright, so implementing all of that was hard. But if you don’t implement it in such an insanely optimized fashion that you can win arbitrary script tests that are meant to strain modern CPUs, the audience most likely to use your browser (geeks) will immediately move to something else and say your browser sucks. Get optimizing.