The "how to disable the data link to Ford" thread

[Tomster]

Ok, new learnings about antenna locations:

There is a lot of RF chatter and it's a bit difficult to discern what's what, but between pulling the fuse and turning different options on and off, a few things have been narrowed down.

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Thanks to previous diagrams, I was quickly able to located extremely strong signal from two antennas (circled). They are below the sheetmetal, so access would be from below the car:

When vehicle hotspot is turned on, these two above are pulsing to beat the band. They are very, very strong. Each one is at least 4x-5x stronger even through the metal than my high-powered home Wi-Fi router. I do not know what purpose they serve other than creating the in-car Wi-Fi hotspot network, if any. I was unable to detect any RF from these locations except when hotspot was on.

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In the rear package tray is clearly the 4G antenna. When refreshing FordPass data or locking/unlocking doors, it sounds exactly like a mobile phone sending/receiving a text.

It phones home precisely every 2min 5sec with a packet of data that sounds like a large quantity of text or small photograph.

I pulled the fuse during one of these transactions and the signal stopped immediately. It is at this time that I'd again like to assert that pulling the fuse is the easiest way to kill the 4G communication (presuming your car has the TCU on its own circuit like my 2019 GT350).

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Disregard the arrow for now (more on that at the very bottom of this post).

Circled is the location of possibly two antennas, one almost certainly being the bluetooth antenna.

First note that while these are strong signals for close range, the strength of the signals seems to me to be something that could communicate at a maximum distance similar to bluetooth devices or a low-mid power router.

What is very confusing is that there is distinct strange chatter approx every 15sec from the circled location even with bluetooth turned off. This chatter is what I previously interpreted as Wi-Fi scans, which is probably inaccurate (it just occurred to me that scanning for Wi-Fi is entirely passive).

I am 1) unable to flip enough switches on and off to get this strange chatter to stop or change its pattern, and I am also 2) unable to locate any source of RF following a press of the Wi-Fi scan button. The strange sound every 15 sec from the circled spot sounds different from the bluetooth scans that also originate from precisely that spot.

I would need to connect to Wi-Fi and attempt to update the unit to identify the location of the Wi-Fi antenna, which is something I'm not going to dive into at this time.

The arrow points to another possible location where different chatter is heard, but I am not 100% confident, it's a little confusing. Here it is circled:

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I will be happy to do any further testing, though I can't think of anything else at this time other that the Wi-Fi antenna location.

I think you know this, but from the open trunk view, the two antennas to the right and left are the cellular antennas. The one forward of the stick shift in the console is your Bluetooth. The one rearward aft of the rear seats is the TCU transmitting wifi.

I'll back you up on your findings.

Do you have a shark fin or a low profile antenna?

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[Epiphany]

Intriguing.

It phones home precisely every 2min 5sec with a packet of data that sounds like a large quantity of text or small photograph.

I pulled the fuse during one of these transactions and the signal stopped immediately. It is at this time that I'd again like to assert that pulling the fuse is the easiest way to kill the 4G communication (presuming your car has the TCU on its own circuit like my 2019 GT350).

 

[drummerboy]

I think you know this, but from the open trunk view, the two antennas to the right and left are the cellular antennas. The one forward of the stick shift in the console is your Bluetooth. The one rearward aft of the rear seats is the TCU transmitting wifi.

I'll back you up on your findings.

Do you have a shark fin or a low profile antenna?

Low profile.

In my 30min of tests, the two antennas in the trunk were not transmitting at any time other than during vehicle hotspot.

The antenna in the package tray is absolutely the one communicating cellular data. Irrefutable says the meter.

 

[drummerboy]

@Tomster, what's your take on the signal coming from the BT antenna area nonstop even with BT turned off? That one confuses me.

 

[Tomster]

@Tomster, what's your take on the signal coming from the BT antenna area nonstop even with BT turned off? That one confuses me.

My take is that even though you turn a menu button off, it isn't always off.

I hope that if bluetooth is enabled that the car won't use it as another data connection.

So, I dont know until I get my hands on the car that I paid for a long time ago that I am still not able to enjoy due to quality issues from the Ford and Penske manufacturing process. Oops, did I just say that?

Give me a while so that I can dig into this. I think you hit it on the head when you said all comms ceased when you pulled the fuse. The jury is out whether data is transmitted via a Bluetooth connection.

 

[ice445]

I'm sure one of the mystery signals is the car communication with the keyfob.

 

[Big John]

I'm sure one of the mystery signals is the car communication with the keyfob.

This was my thought on the signal coming from the cigarette lighter area.

 

[Tomster]

I'm sure one of the mystery signals is the car communication with the keyfob.

My meter arrives today, I will have a look at that too. I believe the frequency is 902Mhz.

 

[drummerboy]

I'm sure one of the mystery signals is the car communication with the keyfob.

I completely forgot about that and that's certainly what it is.

I'm going to edit that as well as the part where I said the trunk antennas were broadcasting at a strength much stronger than my home router - I was mistaken.

My meter arrives today, I will have a look at that too. I believe the frequency is 902Mhz.

That's it. The tone is much lower than the BT tone, closer to what cellular sounds like: Butt your meter up against that USB port and listen for the intermittent signal, and then press scan for bluetooth to hear the 2.4 GHz.

 

[Tomster]

I completely forgot about that and that's certainly what it is.

I'm going to edit that as well as the part where I said the trunk antennas were broadcasting at a strength much stronger than my home router - I was mistaken.

That's it. The tone is much lower than the BT tone, closer to what cellular sounds like. Butt your meter up against that USB port and listen for the intermittent signal, and then scan for bluetooth and hear the 2.4 GHz.

Let me get my hands on the meter today. I am fortunate enough to have a few cars in the garage that are not equipped with the non-optional big brother feature. One is a base R. It has no radio, no Bluetooth, no nothing. The other R is an electronics pack with all the bells and whistles (minus the built in snitch). I can certainly narrow down where the key transmitter/receiver is as well as the Bluetooth.

 

[16Kobra]

Let me get my hands on the meter today. I am fortunate enough to have a few cars in the garage that are not equipped with the non-optional big brother feature. One is a base R. It has no radio, no Bluetooth, no nothing. The other R is an electronics pack with all the bells and whistles (minus the built in snitch). I can certainly narrow down where the key transmitter/receiver is as well as the Bluetooth.

If you want to practice, until yours comes back, I will bring the 19 R over????

 

[Tomster]

@drummerboy

I received the TriField TF2 meter today. I didn't have a lot of time to mess with the cars, but I did make it a point to test cellular, wifi, and bluetooth.

I think it was a success. The meter reads all frequencies from each kind of device.

Tomorrow I should be able to head out to the garage and test the base R and the electronics pack R.

When I get the GT500 back, I'll include all 3 tests (wifi, Bluetooth, and cellular).

Here are the tests from today.
First is a test of the cellular repeater emmitions that I have for my house.





Next is the wifi RF emmissions from my router. The dongle is an RF remote used to reset the router as needed.you can see an initial spike when the RF remote is actuated, then the wifi router takes a bit to boot up. When it is fully active, you can see the activity.





Next up is the test of Bluetooth emissions. I turned all emitters off in my house so that when Bluetooth was activated, you see the emissions. The phone used was in airplane mode, wifi off, bluetooth on.

 

[Tomster]

Today I went out to the 17 electronics pack R and the 18 base R to measure what I could find. This wound up being a waste of time, because had I referenced the workshop manual, I would have seen that the APIM has the Bluetooth and WiFi antennas built into it. I took a measurement and called it a day.

Comparing the GT350 and the GT500 schematics shows me that the GT500 has the antennas and sensors more spread out across the vehicle. Today, all I did was verify the location of the GT350 antennas and sensors.

Below is the short clip in the 17 R

 

[ShelBoss]

Guys this is a topic of great interest to me.
When I took delivery of my '19 GT350R last year, I wondered about Ford Pass. I never downloaded the app - because there's over 20 pages of terms and conditions. So I read them all. I was more than shocked. No I don't want every aspect of my life shadowed in profiles collected by my car. No I don't want Ford or anyone else to share any data they could collect with - oh I don't know, law enforcement, insurance companies, motor vehicles, etc. So not only don't I have the app on my phone, but every time my 350R get's a wifi signal - it asks to connect to the internet - which I say no to. I'm an IT professional, and I am dead set against locking / unlocking, starting, disabling, etc. the car with my phone. Because if I could do this, someone else could do this.

So here's a few questions:
1. No app on my paired phone, never connected the car to the internet: has Ford collected any data on me? I think no, but I'm not sure.
2. If Ford has collected any data from my car, can I revoke their permission to have it / use it, demanding they delete any copies immediately. Whether they actually follow through and delete it is another matter.
3. What will happen if they never get any data from me? Does my Shelby need anything to continue running?

Thank you!

-ShelBoss

 

[Tomster]

Guys this is a topic of great interest to me.
When I took delivery of my '19 GT350R last year, I wondered about Ford Pass. I never downloaded the app - because there's over 20 pages of terms and conditions. So I read them all. I was more than shocked. No I don't want every aspect of my life shadowed in profiles collected by my car. No I don't want Ford or anyone else to share any data they could collect with - oh I don't know, law enforcement, insurance companies, motor vehicles, etc. So not only don't I have the app on my phone, but every time my 350R get's a wifi signal - it asks to connect to the internet - which I say no to. I'm an IT professional, and I am dead set against locking / unlocking, starting, disabling, etc. the car with my phone. Because if I could do this, someone else could do this.

So here's a few questions:
1. No app on my paired phone, never connected the car to the internet: has Ford collected any data on me? I think no, but I'm not sure.
2. If Ford has collected any data from my car, can I revoke their permission to have it / use it, demanding they delete any copies immediately. Whether they actually follow through and delete it is another matter.
3. What will happen if they never get any data from me? Does my Shelby need anything to continue running?

Thank you!

-ShelBoss

Well, therein lies the can of worms.

I dont live my life in a paranoid manner, but let's face it, we live in an era of data collection. So.... Ford spends all this money to equip a vehicle with a 4G cellular data link that uploads details about how the car is driven and used. On top of that, they don't offer it as an option, instead they pay AT&T to give the car that they spent a fair amount of resources to maintain connectivity.

It sure was nice of them to do all of that for no charge so that i can remotely lock my door or start my car. Surely Ford is getting something out of this new found stream of data, otherwise, why would they give it to you for free and bury all the details in the fine print?

So to answer your questions...

1. The modem is always active. So yes, they are collecting data. What they are doing with it? No idea.

2. Thats an interesting question. It all depends what you signed away. I never knowingly gave Ford permission to collect my data, but they say otherwise. When I found out about this, I immediately rescinded all permissions and told them to cancel my FordPass account. Yet, the car still grabs an open wifi network from time to time and wants to phone home.

3. No, they can't do anything. Its your car, you paid for it. This is the reason for this thread. The first thing I did was got rid of that stupid looking sharkfin cellular antenna and replaced it with a low profile sat/GPS antenna. The extra coax that connected to the 4g portion of the antenna was cast aside. So I have no cellular connectivity so it seems. The car will still grab wifi, so i suggest disconnecting the modem (TCU) from all leads that go to it. The TCU is supposed to contain the wifi transmitter as well. So pull all the cables and pull the fuse associated with the TCU.

In summary, some don't care. I do. My car and how it is driven is none of Fords business.

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