I've taken apart the screen bezel on my laptop to disable the webcam before -then covid happened. Now, i just cover the camera with taped paper. -I will never have one of these cars but if i found myself in your situation i wouldn't be above using a hammer and screwdriver to remove the camera and dealing with the consequences after.
this post was submitted on 03 Jun 2026
390 points (100.0% liked)
Privacy
48892 readers
1027 users here now
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
Destroy the camera bro
Wasn't there some news a while ago that talked about how bad car companies handle user data?
Mozilla’s latest edition of *Privacy Not Included reveals how 25 major car brands collect and share deeply personal data, including sexual activity, facial expressions, and genetic and health information
[...]Says Jen Caltrider, *PNI Program Director: “Many people think of their car as a private space — somewhere to call your doctor, have a personal conversation with your kid on the way to school, cry your eyes out over a break-up, or drive places you might not want the world to know about. But that perception no longer matches reality. All new cars today are privacy nightmares on wheels that collect huge amounts of personal information."[...] (source)
Not sure if this was the one I was thinking about. There was also this revelation made by the German CCC (Chaos computer club, pretty famous) about Volkswagen and some leaked GPS data. Here is an English article about it. (There is also the German CCC video, but the English didn't sound very good. It includes an interesting part where they show examples of how bad this GPS leak actually is. E.g. finding the cars from catering companies for important people.)
Criminals or spies could potentially use such data to create a detailed movement profile of the car owners. For foreign intelligence agencies, for example, it may be of interest to see whose cars are parked daily between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. near buildings belonging to the Bundesnachrichtendienst, Germany’s foreign intelligence service. Or those which are driven regularly to the U.S. Air Force base in Ramstein. The Cariad data provided such information.
Btw. Any person who in the year 2026 response to privacy concerns with "I have nothing to hide" is a certified moron and shouldn't be trusted with anything. They also have so little imagination that it should make everyone sad.
Side question : is your car connected to the internet ?
Yes, it has a 2GB/month sim card as far as i am aware
Were you aware of that before you got the car?
I have the inner cam covered on my tesla, no probs so far (been like that for 4 years)
Pull the telematics fuse, although I think they integrate it in so many things now it's rediculous.
Black tape ought to solve it, if not a pair of wire cutters.
I don’t think you are paranoid. This technology is creepy as hell. Almost all cars are connected nowadays and send data back to the manufacturer’s server—visible or not. In the best case it’s just the service history, in the worst case live positions and more. Some cars stop working if the server is shut down *cough. Cameras equipped to unlock based on a face record biometric data. And honestly, would you trust your car manufacturer (!) to handle your biometric data?
I think it's unacceptable and indicative of this dangerous path we are headed down as whole. There's already been a few write ups on how cars are the most privacy disrespecting "devices" out there, which is wild considering we have smartphones.
With the driver facing camera we have no control over it also has complete access to our travel data, probably knows exactly who we are in the car with, records all our private conversations etc. etc.
It's so tiring to hear people defend this as if privacy is a thing of the past and anyone advocating it is being dramatic.
Another in the list of a "1001 Things To Do With Duct Tape."
I fckn hate these laws that force so much tech into new cars under the guise of safety. Not only is it a massive breach in privacy (I don't care if the car manufacturers claim they don't use this data for identification, I won't belive them), but it also makes small cars way more expensive, comparatively. Fck this sh*t, cars have been becoming obnoxiously expensive and forced BS tech like that just makes everything worse.
It's rent seeking through regulations. It's too expensive to make a simple car that also complies with these regulations. The only people who can afford to do it are gigantic established brands with a century of production lines and established infrastructure.
"Oh no. More car brands failed. We can't let them fail can we? Allow us to merge more?"
"Oh no. We're in trouble financially. If we die you won't have cars at all any more because we merged everything. Lots and lots of your voters will be pissed if that happens. There's also no way in hell a new car brand is going to establish itself when it costs so damn much to meet these regulations we lobbied and guided to benefit our established interests"
Clearly they use it for identification if as the OP said the camera can be used to load your driver profile. As far as I know that goes directly against the EU law stating no biometric data can be processed by the camera.
I'm cool with just not driving. Fuck you, car manufacturers. If I can't feasibly live a lifestyle on public transit I'll buy the oldest shittiest shitbox on Earth and drive it until it fucking explodes.
I'll deal and keep fixing my 2001 lil Japanese car until it really gives up. I might even get a whole "new" motor in. If after all that it's imposible to buy another old, pre-2000 car, I won't bother. Fuck them. The lights are too bright and unsafe, the screens are unsafe and now these cameras and all? Ew. If you can't fix it yourself in your garage with basic tools and some beer, you don't own the thing.
Then you are significantly sacrificing your safety. Please get a car made at least after 2013, preferably 2016, if you value your life.
Trust me, the level of elder care in my country, that's the least of my worries. I also don't want to burn into a crisp inside an electric car that won't open it's doors once it sets on fire.
I'm desperately holding on to my Ford Ranger for this exact reason. Obligatory Fuck car manufacturers.
I'll just buy a second-hand 2011 Skoda Fabia. Compact car that just works and doesn't spy on you. Though I'd rather buy the LPG version of it because it costs 86 eurocents/liter here.
Your concern is definitely justified. This is creepy as hell.
Required in the EU and will be required in the US soon. BYD's big export market is Australia which doesn't require them yet but they're mandatory to get a good crash safety rating.
Renault and a lot of BYDs use Android as the software os, so probably it's Android doing the facial recognition (and also probably the attention eye tracking) and that's onboard.
Renault has a dashcam function that records from the built in cameras, but you have to plug in your own USB drive, so the upside of memory price-fixing is it's probably not worth it for Renault to spend $300 to store the data now.
So it'll be possible to root the car through an OBD2 port, theoretically.
Maybe but I don't see you doing that over can us so it would need other connection to the ICE. I'd guess all those updates are OTA now.
I'm guessing though, 2014 is my newest car
If you have access to the port, you can do some really cool stuff, like installing Magisk (app for generating rooted version of the Android ROM based on your filesystem), unlocking bootloader and flashing the image, since some manufacturers don't know that less is more.
Spoiler
See the Security issues part of the article.
Surveillance is good as long as we like the direction the machine is heading.
It's an EU decision. It will be coming to many more cars as it will be mandatory from July 2026 for all newly registered vehicles. Renault 5 is simply one of the first new cars to feature it.
According to the same law, it is illegal to use the system in a way that can identify the person, it may not save biometrics, and it must function in closed loop without sharing the data. It's looking for things like head nodding or looking away from the road for more than 3.5 seconds while driving over 50 km/h. The camera is likely using infrared lighting as it should also work at night.
Anyway. According to the manual, it can be disabled by double tapping a button on the steering wheel or through the touch screen menus, though it will default to being enabled everytime you start the car as per the legal requirement.
If you cover it with tape, wear a mask or drive somebody else's car in which you don't have a profile saved, it will simply use the last previous profile and show an icon in the dashboard as a warning that the function isn't working.
Thank you for the clarification!
I wish, Renault and/or the salesperson would communicate clearly about the camera. It's way creepier when there is just a camera looking at you without having the context of it being required and which privacy requirements it has per law.
Interestingly, if I disable the function and then cover the camera, a warning still appears. I don't know if that's due to a weird implementation by Renault or a thing implied by the law
I think it's an update from January. The first produced R5s doesn't seem to have the camera on the A-pillar. It's part of the media system which is used in other models as well.
I can't imagine that rentals or fleet cars will throw a warning every time someone new uses the car, so I want to bet that the warnings can be disabled somehow with the right access to the ECU.
Renault uses their own ECU computers, which are quite expensive, but previous versions have been accessible using an OSB dongle with other software.
I'm sure someone will eventually figure out how to get into the system once these cars get old enough to reach the used market.
Monthly subscription for safety features coming soon 🔜
The car complains when the camera is covered. At a minimum that means making annoying sounds every time you drive anywhere, at worst the car doesn't let you drive. You can't just dismiss this, it's going to happen more and more, and they will be increasingly hostile to your workarounds.
So disconnect the speaker and the noise should stop
load more comments
(4 replies)
Find and disable the antenna used by the cars electronics.
You have to log your profile into your car?? Fuck everything about that!
load more comments
(9 replies)
"what about the camera on your laptop?"
My personal laptop does not have a camera, and my work laptop has a physical camera blocker.
anybody that doesn't think its an issue is an idiot
"Your insurance claim is denied, our algorithm says it's 70% confident your eyes were dilated in a way consistent with taking alcohol. Also, here's your court hearing date"
view more: next ›