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Is there a method to turn off the Big Brother tracking of one’s activities in the C8. I do not want GM , Car Fax and everyone else knowing everything I do. Car Fax doesn’t need to know it’s time for an oil change or my tires are low, or I robbed a bank.
Ok, I let air out of the tire, and received no notifications. I waited 20 minutes. I plugged in the passenger side antenna, the Onstar light turned green, and I got a notification on my phone for low air pressure, within 1 minute.
Need to call OnStar I believe and ask to have Connected Services discontinued. If you use the Search feature you'll find perhaps a more specific process. HTH
Yet everything you do is still recorded. OnStar subscription or not it's all recorded.
In the car's system I suspect? I think folks are worried about it going out over the air and who knows where.... Is there a "black box" so to speak or is the data in multiple module locations that could be pulled if using the appropriate interface?
It's a lost cause trying to avoid unless you strip the car and run on a standalone ECM and leave your cell phone home. For example is you are in an accident your speed, brake pedal pressure, throttle position, steering wheel location, your location and on and on ect is recorded.
There's a whole other very long and active thread about this in the general forum. GM sells the data for every drive you take (even without an OnStar subscription) to LexisNexis. LN sells it to insurance companies and the like. I complained to the MA AGs office of data privacy and today they assigned an AAG to look into this. Don't know if it will go anywhere, but it's a start. Attached is what shows up in your LexisNexis report. I have almost 300 of these records and no way to get rid of them. This particular one is from an AutoX day. No context to what a speed event or braking event is, no idea who's actually driving the car, no context that it was at an AutoX where I'm not covered by insurance, yet all this is attached to my SSN and you know what will happen to my insurance rates if/when my insurance company pays LN for a copy of my report.
Wow. I'd think you could disconnect the antenna which allows it to transmit this information.
Chevy's telematics team intentionally designed things so it was not easy to disable this without breaking other stuff and the antenna shares functionality with gps and cell iirc (I get there are different wavelengths involved, dunno how it was done). My friend was a senior mgr on their telematics team until 2022 and told me this was a product requirement (he's no longer at Chevy).
Chevy's telematics team intentionally designed things so it was not easy to disable this without breaking other stuff and the antenna shares functionality with gps and cell iirc (I get there are different wavelengths involved, dunno how it was done). My friend was a senior mgr on their telematics team until 2022 and told me this was a product requirement (he's no longer at Chevy).
Yup. That is confirmed by the description and the schematics in the Service Manual. Those antennas - there are two - under the left and right front fenders, are called HIgh Frequency Antenna - Left, Right. And they are multipurpose proving the GPS signals for navigation and to the PDR, and also the 4G connection, and I think also XM radio. GPS also supports the front lift memory function. The coax cables from the antenna through splitters and connect to the telematics module, the radio, the PDR and maybe other places. I think it might be possible to pull the cable where it connects to the telematics module. It appears also that the telematics module also hosts the WiFi and Blutooth connections as well. It may be necessary to disconnect that, or the antenna, to full prevent connections to the outside world.
And, as noted, it is well integrated with all of the cars system. So if it is disabled by modifications (not to be confused with just terminating services), it may very well cause other issues.
The situation is worse than I thought based on some of the responses. I don’t mind having data stored in the “black box “ on the car, but transmitting real-time data that is then sold sounds illegal. Location services and tracking can be turned off on your cell phone for commercial data. We must sign away our rights in the fine print somewhere when buying the car.
The situation is worse than I thought based on some of the responses. I don’t mind having data stored in the “black box “ on the car, but transmitting real-time data that is then sold sounds illegal. Location services and tracking can be turned off on your cell phone for commercial data. We must sign away our rights in the fine print somewhere when buying the car.
Which is why I filed a complaint with the state AG. This data is tied to my SSN now with no proof I was the driver, or what a speed or heavy brake event is or context that I was unisured at a track at the time. Insurance companies that pull this data won't care about any of that and will send my rates thru the roof. The fact that they also do this whether or not someone has an OnStar subscription is just icing on the cake.
Read back about 5 posts. No. Unless you want to disable gps, phone, xm and gps based front end lift. And probably a bunch of other stuff.
I should have worded my question differently as I did read that.
Where is the antenna and is there a way to simply “unscrew”. If so, I will do so and see what happens.
Would also do this on my 2024 Sierra if I knew where to find it. I do not need the GPS tracking offered by GM. I also do not use their wifi plans and do not need cellular connectivity.
Need to call OnStar I believe and ask to have Connected Services discontinued.
If you do this YOU will no longer have access to the data. It's likely still collected and sold.
Regulation of the data broker industry seems more necessary as time goes by.
Originally Posted by rawbar
There's a whole other very long and active thread about this in the general forum. GM sells the data for every drive you take (even without an OnStar subscription) to LexisNexis. LN sells it to insurance companies and the like. I complained to the MA AGs office of data privacy and today they assigned an AAG to look into this. Don't know if it will go anywhere, but it's a start. Attached is what shows up in your LexisNexis report. I have almost 300 of these records and no way to get rid of them. This particular one is from an AutoX day. No context to what a speed event or braking event is, no idea who's actually driving the car, no context that it was at an AutoX where I'm not covered by insurance, yet all this is attached to my SSN and you know what will happen to my insurance rates if/when my insurance company pays LN for a copy of my report.
https://www.internetprivacy.com/how-...om-lexisnexis/
It MIGHT be possible to have that removed from Lexisnexis. Many of the data brokers will comply with removal requests. They are fearful of regulation and they know the sources they use will just send them the data again soon anyway so why not pretend to comply?
Turn off Big Brother
