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  • arclightarclight@oldbytes.space
    Oct 12, 2026, 8:47 PM

    What I would like to do: Grant minimum privileges between car and phone and Toyota and their 4.7E+19 partners such that I can view maps and play the static audio files on my phone through the car's speakers AND NOTHING ELSE. No optional services, no trial offers, nothing but music and maps, full stop.

    My options seem to be full telemetry to everybody + dog or the surveillance infotainment console is a blue-screened brick with an always-on nag screen that can't be dimmed or turned off.

    I mean THIS IS COMPLETELY WHAT I EXPECTED WHEN I BOUGHT THIS CAR. I AM NOT SHOCKED OR SURPRISED, just gravely disappointed that Toyota won't do better.

    I'm just so tired of zero-consent coercive phone-oriented computing. In the analog hardware world there would be a breaker I could pull or pins I could jumper to coerce the system into the desired operating mode. This is worse than a brick. Bricks don't actively nag you.

    I doubt Toyota is the best or worst in this regard and that there's no modern vehicle that doesn't pull this shit. All roads lead back to Google and Apple so what do you expect?

    The missing features aren't going to kill me but I'm stuck with this massive dead-to-me display in the middle of the dash that would be better replaced with a double-DIN bay and third-party non-integrated electronics.

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Replies

  • arclightarclight@oldbytes.space
    Oct 12, 2026, 8:49 PM

    I refuse to hate the new car because of the execrable infotainment console. I just want the nagging wannabe spybot gone.

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  • arclightarclight@oldbytes.space
    Oct 12, 2026, 8:54 PM

    Anyway, I'm happy to pay an infosec/privacy oriented Toyota sysadmin to minimally activate this car such that maps/GPS and local static audio files work and only those two functions work. #ParentalAutomotiveControls

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  • arclightarclight@oldbytes.space
    Oct 13, 2026, 7:35 AM

    One way forward is to ditch the vendor (Toyota) phone app and just use Google Car Play. It doesn't solve the problem but it converts it from a (Toyota + Toyota's partners + Google + Google's partners) problem to a more generic, limited, and slightly less coercive (Google + Google's partners) problem. I don't know what Toyota-exclusive features I would care about - neither maps nor local audio could possibly have any significantly valuable
    vendor component. Privacy- and risk-wise, Car Play is unlikely to be worse than Car Play plus the additional proprietary Toyota layer and there are more eyes on rhe generic Google offering than on the Toyota system. I'm not thrilled with Google but at least they're a known quantity that I'm already familiar with.

    I'm still going to have to restrict or remediate Google's permissions grabs. I only need voice permissions if I'm using the system for hands-free phone operation; I absolutely do not want voice commands enabled. Voice is exclusively for phone use. Curious if I can get what I want through "guest" mode; can't imagine any significant personalization I'd need for maps or audio. If it can get my contacts and playlists from my phone, why would it need any extra permissions? And it's going to see that data anyways because it's essential to the functioning of the system, it's not some gratuitous info-grab like constantly pulling microphone traffic in case it can be monetized.

    Again, it's tiring and depressing to work through this threat analysis. I see these cloying hyper-personalized systems as a far greater threat to my interests and to my peace of mind than any possible convenience. None of these organizations _should_ be trusted; all are demonstrably _untrustworthy_. The question is how to minimize my exposure to untrustworthy actors and systems to get a minimal set of basic features from my car. This takes far more effort than I want to spend on a computer system I use maybe an hour a week.

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  • arclightarclight@oldbytes.space
    Oct 12, 2026, 9:04 PM

    @adr Without voiding the warranty and probably breaking a thousand laws, probably not. It might even take decapping a few chips and adding 10 kilos of bodge wires. At the very least a dozen FPGAs and Raspberry Pis.

    I'm reminded of a Max Headroom episode where the cops were after someone who had installed an illicit "off" switch on their TV. I've seen this story before, long ago.

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  • irrational methodIrrationalMethod@social.coop
    Oct 12, 2026, 11:49 PM

    @arclight

    Yep. Our new Nissan Leaf is wonderful. But I really hate the infotainment system, and my initial attempt to contain it did not make other members of my house happy.

    Most annoying is that there seems to be some sequence to turning on the audio system that results in it playing an unskippable ad for SiriusXM, which I did not want, do not want, will never want.

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  • irrational methodIrrationalMethod@social.coop
    Oct 12, 2026, 11:57 PM

    @rk @arclight

    My research suggests that it is one of the better models in this regard, and turning off all the spyware/information-sharing was pretty easy. It just didn't satisfy the primary driver of the vehicle. 🤷🏼‍♂️

    I suspect the ad is the result of cycling through the audio options with a button, whereas I'm pretty much only connecting direct to Bluetooth and playing audio off my phone.

    While I don't love having two big screens for a dashboard, they've done a decent job on the overall UI/UX for a "smartphone with wheels".

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  • Janne Morenjannem@fosstodon.org
    Oct 12, 2026, 10:03 PM

    @arclight
    A makeshift solution would be bluetooth for the audio and a phone holder for the phone. Use the car speakers and the phone screen.

    Also, I'm happy the infotainment systems seem to vary by major market. If nothing else, the included maps here are good - often with more accurate navigation than Google.

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  • tired blipklardotsh@merveilles.town
    Oct 12, 2026, 10:39 PM

    @arclight the seeming death of DIN and double-DIN is such a travesty. I would be way less mad about modern car infotainment systems if I could just get rid of them and replace with a plain old head unit with a bigass knob for volume and few other features (which is exactly what I installed in my truck, but good luck doing that with newer model years or with passenger cars these days)

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  • arclightarclight@oldbytes.space
    Oct 13, 2026, 4:06 AM

    @klardotsh I'm reticent to give up my 2004 Element because it's blissfully free of touchscreen interfaces and phone apps.

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  • arclightarclight@oldbytes.space
    Oct 13, 2026, 4:04 AM

    @llorenzin It might be dimmable or configurable to stay dark but again, I'd have to be able to get to the settings which may well be locked behind whatever registration/account wall I'm currently stuck at because I won't give it dog + world permissions. Or spend an hour in the driveway screwing around with the UI instead of doing something useful with my life. It's all such a waste of time; I'm just not interested in being a sysadmin for my car.

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  • Lisa Lorenzin KR4LFE (she/her)llorenzin@infosec.exchange
    Oct 13, 2026, 11:37 AM

    @arclight yeah, definitely not wasting worth your time. I wonder whether the dealership (or more likely a friendly non-Toyota-corporate mechanic) would have the ability to bypass the nagwall and just dim it or disable it permanently...

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  • arclightarclight@oldbytes.space
    Oct 13, 2026, 12:08 PM

    @llorenzin Ideally I can make it minimally functional with only the generic Google services under guest mode.

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  • Samsamd@social.coop
    Oct 13, 2026, 12:05 AM

    @arclight your last paragraph was my immediate thought. Yank the Toyota brain box and put something aftermarket in. Which sucks to do to brand new hardware, but at least you’d be able to sell the oem head unit for a good amount

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