Why do phones always end up being brought up in these types of threads?
Your phone normally does not send vehicle & personal driving data to your vehicle's mfgr that could potentially be sold off by them to your insurance co. or whoever else they might choose (that is unless you install your vehicle's app or your ins. carrier's app on it)
I also think (would hope anyway) a majority of people aware of (and not wanting) their vehicle tracking them are also aware of their phone's tracking capabilities too, and so have turned off Location, Bluetooth, and perhaps Data in their phone's settings if they have such concerns about it (maybe even NFC & Wi-Fi as well, though I don't see those as as much concern since you have to be like an inch or something away for NFC to pass any data, and Wi-Fi requires you actively connect to and log into a system or router terminal somewhere). They only turn these on when they need to actually use them.
With all those off, your phone can at most be traced to being within the vicinity of the nearest cell tower it last pinged (a rather coarse metric about a half-mile at the minimum). Don't want that? Turn it completely off.
A side benefit: Your phone's battery lasts MUCH longer per charge with all those radios turned off too.
AFAIK, disabling the telematics system will void the warranty and in some cases is illegal. Newer vehicle purchase agreements specify that you're the user, not the owner. Now, that agreement currently doesn't apply to used vehicles, so if you're not the original purchaser you're in the clear.
Do you have an example?
Our last new vehicle purchase was in 2020 (a time when these systems were already prevalent), there is zero anything about disabling a telematics system on the papers we signed... Infact, we were even given the option by the dealer to not activate the system at all (though I don't trust that the system truly isn't active and transmitting data in such cases). If the system isn't activated, it should be neither here nor there if it's been disabled.
If such clause existed, I also think it would be worded such that it would apply to a second owner too.
I read an article about a 2026 Ranger where the owner disabled the telematics. after an update from FORD the telematics had been restored !!!!!!
the average owner cant win
So if they put a fuse back in it, pull it out again (this only can happen with the truck physically at a dealer, it simply cannot happen if the system is disabled since a disabled systems cannot get OTA updates at all).
everyone should be aware that any device with a cellular baseband chip in it will be communicating with every cell tower it passes (they can and do triangulate your position - SOS calls) regardless of whether there's a SIM in it or not (unless you can actually physically kill the power to the chip). That's just how cell radios work. No question the companies that run the towers are collecting that data. What they might do with it, that's up to you to decide. I have my ideas.
SIM chip has your vehicle's ID on it... Without that, it's just an anonymous signal. But pulling the fuse eliminates that too.
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