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

[Tomster]

Hello Tomster, nice findings. Do you think it is possible to disassemble the TCU and make some photos of both sides of the PCB without destroying the module ?

My suggestion would be to order your own TCU and examine it as needed. All I was trying to do was completely disable it without permanent damage. If I ever have to sell the car, it will all go back to OEM.

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[ShelBoss]

Incentive or disincentive [... quote abbreviated ...]. It doesn’t bother me as I know there is no privacy anymore in the real world.

The Chairman, Tomster, Corrieb - I want to thank you all for indulging this post; it's important to me. Mr. Chairman, it bothers the hell out of me.

I spoke to several Ford executives at various events over the past 2 years (not dealers, the people who actually make the product and decide what will or won't be in it); I obviously won't share their names. Under the cover of anonymity, each one related they don't use the app, know for a fact the information is being collected/saved/sold and agree disabling is the only way to stop it. They've related that out going CEO Jim Hackett's plan was to transform Ford into a mobility company rather than having them known as a car manufacture. They even warned that some at Ford might decide to "disable things" so you have to bring it in for service, so they could collect the data there. Interestingly enough, when Hackett took Ford's reigns in 2017, then outgoing CEO Mark Fields and previous CEO Allan Mulally had already set Ford on a path to introduce 10 new performance cars within 5 years (Focus RS, GT350/R, Focus ST, Ford GT, Fiesta ST, Mustang Bullit, F-150 Raptor, GT500, Mach I - did I forget anything? I think the GT350 & GT350R count as two).

IMHO Hackett was trying to make Ford into Tesla. That's where the Mach-E came from. I agree as an SUV/Crossover it's fine - just don't call it a Mustang. But Ford is not Tesla. It's also noteworthy that Henry Ford III (who I thought would have been CEO by now) is running the Ford Foundation - giving credence to my belief that he did not agree with the current direction. Not sure what Jim Farley has planned; I've been told he's gone to the dark side (Farley "was" known as a car guy who works on classic cars and has been seen on a race track) - meaning that he's committed to the electric car, autonomous car, and mobility transformation of Ford that Hackett was executing. The theory is Farley got the job because Hackett didn't do it quick enough.

So where does all this wind up? I'm in love with my GT350R, haven't driven it much, want to disable to data collection, fear remote locking/unlocking, remote starting/disabling, and any notion of future that doesn't appreciate internal combustion engine vehicles. I want to view this the same way I viewed disconnecting the rev limiter in my '70 Boss 302 when new. But I fear it's more complicated than that.
-ShelBoss

 

[Michael_vroomvroom]

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?

Ideally it would be because they get some percentage of money from AT&T (or in Europe, Vodafone) when you buy a dataplan for your car. Or to just add some features some customers will like and can give Ford an extra point or two. If you don't worry about your car being stolen during those few minutes and live in a snowy place, I could imagine it being nice to start up the car via your phone while you're eating breakfast, then walking out to a warm car where the snow has hopefully melted of the windows too. Or the opposite if your car is baking in the sun.

In exchange for the radio (esim?) being locked to AT&T/Vodafone/etc., AT&T allows you to use some minimal amount of data even without buying a dataplan. E.g., even without a dataplan, I would get a notification from the Fordpass app if the car alarm was triggered. I could also check the odometer reading from the app (useful if you have to leave the car with a new shop you don't necessarily trust).

Well, ideally it would be like that.

I'm not currently interested in this enough myself (no remote start allowed here in Europe I think, and I bought a one year dataplan for mine and daughters convenience anway), and also did not read the whole thread so I'm not sure if it's been suggested by others and subsequently discarded already, but:
4G traffic is encrypted as far as we need to be concerned, but wifi is not necessarily encrypted.

Assuming wifi is used to "phone home", either as the preferred method, or as a backup if 4g is not available (I think it makes most sense to have wifi be the preferred method, but who knows, and I think one post here indicated it was the backup method), it should not be to hard to let the car radio connect to your home wifi, put the nic (network interface card) of your laptop/pc, which is also connected to the same wifi, in what is called "monitor mode", and then use some network monitoring program (e.g., wireshark or similar) on your pc to view all traffic on your wifi network.

I'm guessing you could quickly figure out which address belonged to the car. You could even log in to your home wifi router and list the "dhcp clients" or similar, which would show all hosts/machines connected to your wifi and their MAC-address. Perhaps one of the client names would be something you would immediately guess is your car. Then you could let your computer/wireshark log all the traffic from the MAC-address corresponding to your car for for some hours/days. Is there anything interesting to see there? Or is the traffic from the car encrypted? It would make sense that the app uses encryption, but who knows.

 

[hlh1]

I pulled fuse 10 on my 19GT but FordPass still pulls info from the car.

 

[kilobravo]

HLH: I don't know about a '19 GT but if the manual only shows telematics for that location and it's a 5A breaker, then it may not work on your car. However, I got the wrong breaker the first time so you might wanna check. Once I got the correct one pulled, no more phoning home.

 

[hlh1]

HLH: I don't know about a '19 GT but if the manual only shows telematics for that location and it's a 5A breaker, then it may not work on your car. However, I got the wrong breaker the first time so you might wanna check. Once I got the correct one pulled, no more phoning home.

I got the right one; Fuse 10, Telematics, and 5 amps. I wonder if the FordPass App uses the blue tooth connection with my phone to get this info? I've not noticed anything amiss without this fuse as everything seems to work that I normally use. Guess I'll leave Fuse 10 removed in the hope it does something to keep the data collection down.

 

[kilobravo]

In that case amigo, I'll guess that Ford Pass might have been seeing a ghost connection. If yours is wired the same, killing the modem via that breaker should completely disable the data connection with Ford.

 

[Vlad Soare]

The 2020 GT/EB manual shows telematics at no. 8. You may want to check that, too.

 

[kilobravo]

Vlad: That makes more sense as it jibes with what is on the '20.

 

[hlh1]

My Fuse 8 is empty. I guess there were changes from 19 to 20.

 

[kilobravo]

That's interesting. Are you still seeing connectivity with Ford Pass?

 

[hlh1]

I'm seeing that FordPass is still able to pull odometer, Oil life and fuel info even with this Fuse pulled. Maybe FordPass is getting this through blue tooth?

 

[Vlad Soare]

Yes, that goes through BT. It works also in cars which don't have a modem.

 

[kilobravo]

I think you can rule BT out but I don't think it's material to the question. Reason is, the only way the Ford Pass app (and the vehicle for that matter,) can communicate with Mother Ford is through the vehicle's cellular connection (unless you give it a Net connection via Wifi.)

On the '20's, like yours, only "Telematics" is listed for that breaker location and it has been determined that "Telematics" = modem. So, with the modem depowered, it shouldn't matter what other connections exist between the mobile device and the vehicle if it can't make a cellular data connection.

 

[kilobravo]

I'll edit the above by saying I do not know if the network card is part of the modem chip or not. Therefive, a WiFi connection may not even be possible with it depowered. That said, I haven't tried it but if you don't give the car or the app the network creds, it doesn't matter.

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