I do not know. The response I got from JLR is as follows:

"From a telematics point of view, you can disable all optional location based services by opting out of all InControl services. You can achieve this by unbinding your vehicle from your InControl account. Please note that by opting out of InControl, this would not stop the collection of location data in certain emergency or legally required situations."

In CA you can request the deletion of your data, but they can keep data they deem to be necessary for the business and financial transactions. So they might wipe everything out and have no record of your car warranty or they wipe out almost nothing. The law is pretty ambiguous.

 

Interesting.

I bought my Defender used. I never consented to any privacy policy, never had anything presented to me since I don't think cars should have apps on phones.

Does anyone know how to disable the cellular modem on the vehicle? I'd much rather have it completely disabled so that it doesn't download or upload anything.

 

So by one interpretation of their wording, if you opt-out of the default "permission" via the app, they claim the right to collect data while actively IN an emergency or legally required situation, and not before then?

For example, if you have an accident and you push whatever emergency button might be in the car, you would want your location to be found and transmitted to rescue folks.

On the other hand, if "legal" means the cops or whoever get to comb through your location data, which JLR has for years already acquired and stored in advance, that would be highly offensive. As an aside, it wouldn't surprise me if this was actively, if quietly, being encouraged by law enforcement.

Sadly, it's more likely that they do collect all info every time you stop, for the life of the vehicle, regardless. You know, for "business reasons."

Either way, one day JLR will be hacked, and the every single stop for years location data of tens of thousands of people, named along with VIN info, etc., will be offered for sale, or just posted in the wild (if it hasn't happened already).

At a minimum, JLR should be pressed for more clarity about their practices.

 

Me too!

Another gentleman in this forum made some progress on this issue, but he hasn't posted an update in a while. That said, the cellular antenna is in the shark-fin. That's not extremely difficult to access. You do have to know which cable to pull. Also, you might need to "terminate" the cable, likely to 50 Ohms, but only if you get an error message. In a different thread, people discussed which cable it probably is.

The telematics module is behind the left-hand rear cargo space area trim. However, you can't disable that module (e.g. by pulling it or its fuse), as it's too deeply embedded in the car's systems. But you can pull the same cable there if that's easier for you.

I should review what's known and give it a try.

 

Go figure they wouldn't make it as easy as just pulling a sim card. Perhaps devising a harness terminator for the sharkfin would be something an enterprising EE would be willing to take on.

I'm not a huge privacy nerd, but when it comes to possible geolocation data sharing with no-named data brokers, along with vehicle telemetry data, I start to draw the line.

I am a HUGE opponent of over-the-air updates and I really don't want my wife to install them accidentally. (I've already told her to decline the install when it prompts her).

 

H1Tad: The good news for you is that disconnecting the LTE antenna will also disable updates. If you really want one, though, I think you can connect the car to your home WiFi. (I don't care about non-critical updates much either.) There is likely no need for anything more than disconnection, but there's a small chance that the telematics module will complain. In that case, a 50 Ohm resistor will trick the module into thinking an antenna is still connected and you are just outside cell service. (Another caveat is that I don't know the impedance of the antenna, but it's very likely 50 Ohms.)

Another point in JLR's response: They say you can halt "optional" data collection "by unbinding your vehicle from your InControl account." That's not what their lawyer-speak stuff says on their web site. That says or implies that you can opt-out via a setting in the app, not by deleting your car entirely from your account. Now, they are saying you must do the latter.