What in this Jeep is spying on us?

[Alpine Warthog]

For what it's worth, even if I knew a vehicle nefariously collected data, I would never subpoena it. Through your cell phone, I can triangulate your general movements. Next, your apps all ping location, and if anything you have is linked to google, I can pinpoint your location within 5 feet. Next is all the geocache information your apps collect, and then next is municipal cameras, ring, security cameras, etc. that I use facial recognition or AI to spot your vehicle and license plate. I'll know were you live and determine when and how much electricity you used to determine when you were home. Same with water and internet. I'd get your computer, break through whatever encryption software you think is protecting your information, and pore over every detail of your electronic history. Your banking, credit card transactions, etc. I'll figure out where you buy gas, how much of it, and determine your daily schedule-- so I know when you deviate from it.

Suffice to say, you can't wipe your ass without the government knowing, if they wanted to. I can collect so much information about you that you'll be coming to me to ask what your favorite color is.

So don't worry about the Jeep.

This is very true. Every bit of it.

I would say that I think that people that know what and how it is collected are also able to obfuscate their actual data. Cell Phones can be left at home or put in faraday bags. There are things you can do to mask your movements and habits. One such method is through data overload. (suppose you're a closet conservative, you do a LOT of lefty propaganda googling) and then you use duckduckgo to read your daily dose of righty propaganda. Sure they can eventually find your activities but keeping yourself off of the radar through your google activity is an effective mask (for a while at least)

I spent a lot of years in law enforcement. I was very excited every time a new camera was put up that I could pull information from. License plate readers on my patrol car? yes, please! Remote immobilizers? Hell yeah. 5G cell coverage? Can't come fast enough.

Then Covid happened and states started snitch lines (Looking at you Witmer, Newsome and Walz among others)
Then there was the stay at home orders and the vaccine passport proposals.
Now my opinion on all the electronic doodads has taken a crazy 180.

So, now that I've outed myself and big brother knows my pink hair is a cover, I'm going to have to burn everything and start all over in Azerbaijan

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[ShadowsPapa]

To be fair he can be using a VPN

Bet he still owns a cell phone, likely on fakebook and/or instacrap, and uses a browser, and probably has a smart TV, perhaps uses a free email service like from mickysoft or google.

 

[ShadowsPapa]

Bingo, I working Cyber Security for DoD............your refrigerator or some other household appliances are spying on you too

Is that why there's a light in the fridge? So they can get a better view for facial rec?

Back when I was in IT security for the state, I recall that some of the SSA info was farmed out to servers operated by Gannett. I got alerts one day that an employee was accessing a server with a risk on it - it happened that the counselor was looking up the SS status of a client, and that info was on that server.
I ended up having to temporarily block access to that server for the whole agency - which pissed counselors off and management came knocking on my door insisting I open things back up. Sorry, no can do until I contact them and figure out what's going on.
I contacted Gannett, got to the admin in charge of those servers and I almost fell out of my chair when he said "yeah, that happens to us now and then, I'll have to go in and clean it up".
And I wondered - WTF did that guy even do - PREVENTION, not cleanup after the mess is made. Worse, they were approved by the SSA to hold and make available to agencies like ourselves, PII.
It took a couple of days for them to clean things up and update their servers (ever heard of firewalls and intrusion prevention?) and for two days, I took crap as I refused to unblock access.

OTOH, it was fun being a bad guy now and then LOL.

You should have seen my boss's face when I showed him that our in-house app that tracked clients and their information left crumbs on the drive long after the app was shut down.
Boss: But but but.......... our computers are password protected!
So I made a Linux boot CD, stuck it in a counselor's computer, booted Linux, mounted the Windows volume, went into the browser cache and showed my boss a nice screen full of complete client info - including SSNs.
He asked me for solutions - password protect BIOS settings, prevent boot from any external device, and encrypt all drives, prevent Windows from recognizing any USB device except those we own and encrypt, prevent local storage of any documents.
Love it when i see one of those TV shows where they stick a USB device into a computer, and instantly copy all documents from the hard drive to the USB device.
Not in my agency.

Uh, what was the topic again???

 

[Mister Lamb]

Bet he still owns a cell phone, likely on fakebook and/or instacrap, and uses a browser, and probably has a smart TV, perhaps uses a free email service like from mickysoft or google.

You can greatly minimize online exposure as alternatives exist for everything you mentioned.

Google Pixel w/ GrapheneOS, no social media, configured Brave Browser for browsing with w VPN, Protonmail for email. The list goes on.

 

[Alpine Warthog]

You should have seen my boss's face when I showed him that our in-house app that tracked clients and their information left crumbs on the drive long after the app was shut down.
Boss: But but but.......... our computers are password protected!
So I made a Linux boot CD, stuck it in a counselor's computer, booted Linux, mounted the Windows volume, went into the browser cache and showed my boss a nice screen full of complete client info - including SSNs.
He asked me for solutions - password protect BIOS settings, prevent boot from any external device, and encrypt all drives, prevent Windows from recognizing any USB device except those we own and encrypt, prevent local storage of any documents.
Love it when i see one of those TV shows where they stick a USB device into a computer, and instantly copy all documents from the hard drive to the USB device.
Not in my agency.

Uh, what was the topic again???

Military has banned the use of USB thumb drives for that very reason. What a PIA... but hey YGDWYGD (you gotta do what ya gotta do)

 

[yoda13]

I just assume someone is tracking everything I do. It used to make me queasy, but I’ve accepted it. I wish it were different.

 

[ShadowsPapa]

Military has banned the use of USB thumb drives for that very reason. What a PIA... but hey YGDWYGD (you gotta do what ya gotta do)

The Frontline show "Rise of the Hackers" showed a study/experiment being done. I can't recall now if it was CDs or UBS sticks, but they marked whatever it was as being important, and "accidentally" left it in a public place.
The result? something over 90% of all people who "found" it would take it to work and put it in their employer's computer to check it out.
Yeah, makes sense the military would do that.............

One small incident while I worked endpoint security for PFG was caused by a helpdesk employee bring disk from home to check it out on his work computer.
Sadly, he was simply told "please don't do that again".

 

[Alpine Warthog]

I just assume someone is tracking everything I do. It used to make me queasy, but I’ve accepted it. I wish it were different.

Me too but I like to make whoever is trying to figure me out have to work for it. My data (that I can control) is so convoluted it looks like I'm an old cat lady with the attention span of a gold fish and a Shopping network addiction who's subscribed to every possible democratic political figure......

 

[ShadowsPapa]

Me too but I like to make whoever is trying to figure me out have to work for it. My data (that I can control) is so convoluted it looks like I'm an old cat lady with the attention span of a gold fish and a Shopping network addiction who's subscribed to every possible democratic political figure......

I don't have to even try to make them work for it - even doctors struggle to figure me out, I have no attention span, currently have 2 browsers open - 2 tabs in one and 15 in the other.


Think I'm kidding?

Oh, and this is my PDF viewer -

Them suckers is gittin' dizzy trying to figure me out.

 

[kevman65]

The OP shows "Pilot" as occupation, the JT is the least of his worries of Big Brother watching him.

 

[Bandolero]

What do we need to remove, disable or disconnect…to defeat the big brother spying? 2023 JTRD.

The easiest way is to disconnect the head unit. Most of the data collection is being transmitted via the head unit. There was a time where Americans wouldn’t stand for the invasive data collection we all just accept as “there’s nothing I can do about it” now. How much data everyone shares is their own personal decision. Some vehicles leave the factory with an Apex tracker pigtailed into the OBD2 port. You have to trace it back up into the area behind the obd2 port to see if yours had the pigtail and the cellular tracker. Aside from that some research may yield other sources of data collection. The beauty of owning a jeep is you can mod it as you see fit. Removal of the data collection devices is a cool mod in my opinion. Your cellphone definitely collects tons of data but you can limit that with any of the flip phones….. or ditching the phone. There’s always an option. If consumers demand better privacy protections then companies will respond. If you’re ok with your data being harvested…. It’s your data … that’s your right as well.

 

[jmdwifi]

I got another message from Connect. You all need milk.

 

[Bandolero]

The easiest way is to disconnect the head unit. Most of the data collection is being transmitted via the head unit. There was a time where Americans wouldn’t stand for the invasive data collection we all just accept as “there’s nothing I can do about it” now. How much data everyone shares is their own personal decision. Some vehicles leave the factory with an Apex tracker pigtailed into the OBD2 port. You have to trace it back up into the area behind the obd2 port to see if yours had the pigtail and the cellular tracker. Aside from that some research may yield other sources of data collection. The beauty of owning a jeep is you can mod it as you see fit. Removal of the data collection devices is a cool mod in my opinion. Your cellphone definitely collects tons of data but you can limit that with any of the flip phones….. or ditching the phone. There’s always an option. If consumers demand better privacy protections then companies will respond. If you’re ok with your data being harvested…. It’s your data … that’s your right as well.

https://www.jeepgladiatorforum.com/forum/threads/what-the-heck-is-this-mystery-device.33321/

This is the Apex tracker I was referring to. APEX is a company used by Stellantis but there are others used by dealers .

 

[ShadowsPapa]

I got another message from Connect. You all need milk.

 

[ShadowsPapa]

https://www.jeepgladiatorforum.com/forum/threads/what-the-heck-is-this-mystery-device.33321/

This is the Apex tracker I was referring to. APEX is a company used by Stellantis but there are others used by dealers .

Anything piggybacked on the OBD port will be dealer installed - to upsell stolen vehicle tracking and recovery services.
There's at least 4 threads on it I can think of right now

This is what dealers use to sell the recovery service.
I have 3 devices in my cabinet - and if you look at some of the stickers on some of the Jeeps on the lot - there's a line item added by the dealer, and when buying, the financial guy may try to sell you on that service.

They look at me and say "I doubt you are interested in this" and move along.......... LOL - they know me.

Dealers install GPS trackers with a cellular SIM card in them for multiple reasons - either to track inventory, or, to sell you recovery services. They get a cut.
If you want such a thing, you can do it cheaper later but then most thieves will look for these anyway.
There was one in each of the 3 Jeeps we've bought since 2019 - for selling recovery services as an add-in during the sale.

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