Does anyone know about the legality of removing the built-in sim cards from your car, specifically in Australia?
I don’t intend on using any car smart-features when I get one. For context, I’ve never owned a car. When I do get one though, I intend to remove the sim card to prevent the car’s location from being constantly tracked. All I care about in terms a cars functionality is a radio, a CD drive (Yes, I use CD’s), and Bluetooth audio, so I don’t think removing the sim card should affect this much, if at all. Any knowledge and advice would be appreciated, thankyou!
Update: What I was referring to is an eSim, which appears not to be in the form of a physical card. Even so, if possible, I would like to disable the functionality of this eSim assuming the car I purchase has one in-built. From my research, I cannot find anything that explicitly forbids disabling or removing Sims.
When you do finally drive, you’ll find that having a GPS and such is awesome.
If you’re paranoid to that extent, you’re better off getting an old car honestly. But trust me, nobody cares about tracking your car, and there are so many licence plate readers here in Australia you’re not really anonymous anyway
This is just the usual “nothing to hide” handwaving argument.
This data is not used by some theoretical policeman to laugh at how bad you drive, it is part of commercial datamining present in virtually all devices and services you use.
GPS and such? Great that I have a smartphone that I trust more, and have more control over, than this big blackbox with no access whatsoever.
I know how helpful GPS is. Also, I am not paranoid, and you shouldn’t be making those kinds of assumptions about anyone you don’t know. I simply want to minimize private data being open for abuse and am exploring what can and can’t be done, and their benefits and disadvantages. This after all, is the privacy community you’re talking in; where you share advice and knowledge about enhancing ones privacy, not telling them they are paranoid for pursuing it.
As others have said it will likely be an ESIM or similar solution because there isn’t a need for the manufacturer to support physical SIMs.
Regarding being tracked though, Australia has ANPR just like most other developed countries, you will be trackable even if your car was just a Flintstones car with a numberplate.
I’d also add if you’ve got a phone in your pocket, that’s just as trackable
This is more about the car maker harvesting data, rather than just tracking the car. Car makers have been (quietly) building more tech into their cars to collect data for the purposes of selling it to third parties. It’s effectively the enshittification of cars.
