On November 20, 2024, Shubham Shah and I discovered a security vulnerability in Subaru’s STARLINK admin panel that gave us unrestricted access to all vehicles and customer accounts in the United States, Canada, and Japan.
They will now replace the Starlink module free of charge under a recall. Your battery will keep dying unless you either replace the module or remove the fuse that activated the thing.
Well sure…they won’t replace it unless you want them to…it’s your car. But what I mean to say is that they can replace it under warranty now and if you don’t replace it you will keep losing batteries. That’s what happened with my 2018 Outback (I went through a battery every 3-6 months for 3 years).
Actually I gave them two ways to eliminate the parasitic drain: replace with a working spy unit or disconnect the non working spy unit (the status quo would leave them with continuously dying batteries).
Plus, let’s be real: the chances that anyone cares about any one person’s location is slim to none (barring political figures, billionaires, and celebrities). If you are worried about the mass collection of people’s locations, dropping one person off the Subaru map will have zero impact. Taking away a Subaru data point does not do anything about cell phone GPS, cell tower triangulation, EZ-Pass tracking, traffic cameras, or licence plate tracking (and those are just the car based tracking systems off the top of my head).
I only had this battery replacement last year. My previous battery actually still worked okish when they replaced it, but they said they would replace it for me for free. It was almost 7 years old when I had it replaced.
They will now replace the Starlink module free of charge under a recall. Your battery will keep dying unless you either replace the module or remove the fuse that activated the thing.
They told me specifically that they didn’t replace it. I told them not to.
Well sure…they won’t replace it unless you want them to…it’s your car. But what I mean to say is that they can replace it under warranty now and if you don’t replace it you will keep losing batteries. That’s what happened with my 2018 Outback (I went through a battery every 3-6 months for 3 years).
Why are you pushing this guy to replace the non-working spy unit with a WORKING spy unit?
Actually I gave them two ways to eliminate the parasitic drain: replace with a working spy unit or disconnect the non working spy unit (the status quo would leave them with continuously dying batteries).
Plus, let’s be real: the chances that anyone cares about any one person’s location is slim to none (barring political figures, billionaires, and celebrities). If you are worried about the mass collection of people’s locations, dropping one person off the Subaru map will have zero impact. Taking away a Subaru data point does not do anything about cell phone GPS, cell tower triangulation, EZ-Pass tracking, traffic cameras, or licence plate tracking (and those are just the car based tracking systems off the top of my head).
I only had this battery replacement last year. My previous battery actually still worked okish when they replaced it, but they said they would replace it for me for free. It was almost 7 years old when I had it replaced.