Does Your Car Contain a GPS Tracker Without Your Knowledge?

rslifkin said:

z31maniac said:

bigdaddylee82 said:

I would be demanding the dealer replace the wiring harness they hacked up to install the Orwellian device.

I would have just returned the truck.

Same here.  When they failed to remove it, that means they failed to meet the terms of the deal and I'd be expecting them to take the truck back.  But actually, because of the potential wiring harness hacking, I probably wouldn't have bought the truck in the first place once I knew that thing had been installed.  

The wiring harness is my big thing too. Even though it *shouldn't* cause a problem I can see something happening and the dealer blaming some modification on you vs what they had installed. 

z31maniac said:

bigdaddylee82 said:

I would be demanding the dealer replace the wiring harness they hacked up to install the Orwellian device.

I would have just returned the truck.

Well, Ford had repurchased my 2018 F-150 (full story on that here) and I was looking to buy something fairly quickly. I would have skipped this dealership in general, but I figured a 41k-mile CPO truck with the exact color combo, trim and options I wanted, at a competitive price, located nearby was hard to find. It's not worth returning the truck when I like it, it's CPO'd until 2023 and I was able to remove the device with no issues.

I did, more or less, return my F-150 because it had an engine rattle goin' on that Ford identified, couldn't fix, then tried to tell me was just normal. That was worth raising a fit over. The Ram... eh. I'd truthfully rather have my article come up when someone Googles "Kahu" or "Spireon" or "Fair Oaks Dodge" more than anything else. I already got mine but others deserve to be educated.

We live in the worst version of cyberpunk. We got all the corporations tracking and controlling us, but without the sweet aesthetics and biohacking.

Do you know anyone else who bought a car there ?

or a mechanic who worked there ?

Might be an interesting followup

californiamilleghia said:

Do you know anyone else who bought a car there ?

or a mechanic who worked there ?

Might be an interesting followup

I don't but I'd love to get in touch with a mechanic who works or worked there. I suspect most who still work there won't want to talk though.

Wow, thats nuts. I bet they kept the second key for exactly as you suspected, repo later as needed. Glad yours is all cleared up.

java230 said:

Wow, thats nuts. I bet they kept the second key for exactly as you suspected, repo later as needed. Glad yours is all cleared up.

Eh. If it were a small time corner car lot I could see that. But working at an actual marque dealership, the sales departments are E36 M3shows that lose or misplace keys all the time. Keeping track of a key like that for later repo would be a nightmare. Not saying it's not possible but at my stealership they'd either just pay repo guy or just cut a new key and pass the fees onto the owner/defaulter.

slowbird said:

We live in the worst version of cyberpunk. We got all the corporations tracking and controlling us, but without the sweet aesthetics and biohacking.

I wonder if people are still doing things with subcutaneous magnets in their fingertips.  Supposedly you learn to interpret vibrations in the magnets as a sense of electricity.

Well, until the coating on the magnet fails, and your flesh goes necrotic and they have to amputate your finger.  

In reply to Brake_L8 :

Worked there for a short time as a tech in the late 80s. No idea if it's still owned by the same people but I would be unlikely to buy anything from them.

rob_lewis said:

Besides fleet tracking, I wonder if they're getting kickbacks from lenders   I know the "buy here pay here" lots put GPS trackers on their cars to quickly find it in case they need to repo the car. 

-Rob

This is my thought.

NOT A TA said:

Meanwhile the Googles street view vehicles drive past our homes easily being able to scan license plates in driveways of many homes but few people care. Do they put that info into a database?

Not that's known at this time. They did however get themselves in a bunch of trouble for wardriving (cataloging all the WiFi access points and the type of security, or lack there of, for each location it found.)

The less info you can give the better. But what I don't understand is what the "selling" of my info gains anyone? I still never answer unknown numbers. And I never get a spam email that is aimed at me. Im not a college student, I don't have a pacemaker, and I'm already hung well. I don't need anything spam throws at me!

Apexcarver said:

lets not start on stores requiring a phone number/email/etc to make a purchase...

This is literally the only thing that Radio Shack was ever ahead of the curve on.

In reply to JG Pasterjak :

TRS-80 ?

I had a 2018 Honda Fit Sport for a short while (end of 2017 through 2018). The car doesn't come with navigation nor is it even an option; yet, on the infotainment screen I would constantly see a "GPS" icon in the top corner. It's always made me wonder what was being relayed back to Honda since it def didn't use it to sync the car's clock to whatever time zone i was in. 

All of our cars have GPS trackers, no matter how old they are: 

JG Pasterjak said:

Apexcarver said:

lets not start on stores requiring a phone number/email/etc to make a purchase...

This is literally the only thing that Radio Shack was ever ahead of the curve on.

the ski shop I work at has done that since at least the mid-90s when I started there. They use it for exactly two things:

1) sending one email per year, about our big season-opening sale

2) looking up purchases for people who lost their receipts

we don't "require" it, but we always ask and only a few people decline. 

_ said:

The less info you can give the better. But what I don't understand is what the "selling" of my info gains anyone? I still never answer unknown numbers. And I never get a spam email that is aimed at me. Im not a college student, I don't have a pacemaker, and I'm already hung well. I don't need anything spam throws at me!

I don't think it's that specifically marketed a lot of the time, Could just be aggregation and data analysis, for things like advertising on billboards.   Drive through different parts of town, or even different directions on the same road, and you'll see radically different types of advertisements.

Me, I'm annoyed at directed marketed anything, because I think it's denying me experience.  If I do a Google search for something on one computer, I get tech hits.  If I try to search for the same thing on my tablet, I get nothing but marketing ads.  Makes it a pain in the tail when I'm at work and trying to look up tech info when on my tablet. 

DirtyBird222 said:

I had a 2018 Honda Fit Sport for a short while (end of 2017 through 2018). The car doesn't come with navigation nor is it even an option; yet, on the infotainment screen I would constantly see a "GPS" icon in the top corner. It's always made me wonder what was being relayed back to Honda since it def didn't use it to sync the car's clock to whatever time zone i was in. 

I figured nearly every recent car with a giant screen has the GPS module in it, it's just whether you pay the fee for them to unlock the software. 

z31maniac said:

DirtyBird222 said:

I had a 2018 Honda Fit Sport for a short while (end of 2017 through 2018). The car doesn't come with navigation nor is it even an option; yet, on the infotainment screen I would constantly see a "GPS" icon in the top corner. It's always made me wonder what was being relayed back to Honda since it def didn't use it to sync the car's clock to whatever time zone i was in. 

I figured nearly every recent car with a giant screen has the GPS module in it, it's just whether you pay the fee for them to unlock the software. 

That particular variant of Honda's infotainment has the GPS module in it but no navigation option is offered for that head unit with that part number. Some of the dweebs over at fitfreak have their conspiracy theories. It's likely Honda just paid to have all of their infotainment decks to have that to cut costs. I can tell you the GPS module in that deck did not help me at all when I was in the middle of west texas at night with no cell service on a dirt road where I made a wrong turn. 

Does anyone know any dealership insiders who can speak to their end of this?

The UK was/is?  requiring gps on all the cars, as they make you pay to drive in the congested areas, and just like cell phones, you know the police will be able to see the records to find out when/where you drove to.   And of course they will see your speeds, think intersection cameras were bad enough, just wait.

You can see a day coming soon where you need permission to get on the highway at certain times, like how electricity is now metered by daytime, and water useage, and soon highway useage is metered, particularly now that electric cars don't pay gas taxes.

Streetwiseguy said:

rob_lewis said:

Besides fleet tracking, I wonder if they're getting kickbacks from lenders   I know the "buy here pay here" lots put GPS trackers on their cars to quickly find it in case they need to repo the car. 

-Rob

This is my thought.

"We own the Bank!"

Sarah Young said:

Does anyone know any dealership insiders who can speak to their end of this?

I have a friend who was the sales manager at a Ford dealership for a long while. He basically confirmed what I wrote in my article - it all boils down to fleet management when the cars are for sale on the lot, and laziness when they are sold.

irish44j said:

All of our cars have GPS trackers, no matter how old they are: 

The big difference being that you can turn that one off. That's harder with a dealership installed device that you don't know exists or if you do, where it is.