756
Toyota Owner Didn’t Know His Car Was Talking To Insurers Until He Saw His Rates
(www.carscoops.com)
this post was submitted on 22 Jan 2026
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Honestly if a car has any form of internet connectivity built in, it should raise so many red flags before you even sit down to talk financing.
Good luck finding a modern car that doesn't, I just yank out the power to the modem
my rates do seem high. I had a wreck a few years back but it was a dented door and fixed just fine. I work from home so I dont drive all that much, and the car is cheap. But it does have telemetry. I wonder if I should just bridge a resistor across the onstar antenna terminals
Casually reading, you could put a 50ohm or larger resistor there.
You will have a better result removing/disabling the module completely. There are several searchable tutorials based on the vehicle module.
Yes but if it ever goes into the shop a software update can teach it to misbehave when things are disconnected. An artificially weak signal, on the other hand, would fall under a practical failure mode they would have accommodated for in firmware.
Ah, I don't think about dealerships unless I'm looking for used cars. I repair everything I own the best I can and move on when I can't. It's stressful, but I prefer it to a payment.
My '24 Civic has no connectivity but bluetooth. I don't know about the 25s.
I wouldn't mind doing this on my vehicle. Elaborate?
Searching for your car model + 'disable modem', 'remove cellular', 'physically remove 5g', etc. Will often come up with guides for specific vehicles.
In my car, it's just a separate board you can just unplug.
There might be a dedicated fuse, also. If so, that would be the easiest solution
So, OnStar, for decades now, has had cellular activity whether you were paying for it or not. They just used to be careful about not selling data. But even if the user didn't pay and the manufacturer didn't sell, those models are trackable by ISP.
Sounds logical.
which part sounds logical?
That Onstar probably has decades of telemetry they've sold.
They definitely have. You have to jump through hoops to request and delete your data from some data broker. I had to do this, it was a massive report with no context and arbitrary statements like "hard braking" and "excessive acceleration". They sell the data to brokers who sell out to insurance companies to raise your rates based on these arbitrary reports.
It's all so disgusting.