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The amount of times I see "I'd like to do the right thing but my spouse isn't on board" is mind boggling.

It's wild how convenience trumps everything and then we look back to say, "we should have done better."

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Okay it's a red herring here. I also like to use carplay and the phone's GPS is truly awful to use. I also like to dictate texts and take calls in my car. These are things that don't need to be sacrificed if a scalpel is used in place of a butcher's knife.

Sometimes it helps to have someone with their priorities in order keeping a reality check on people who don't always stay grounded.

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The convenience here for you is CarPlay though. You could instead use a different more accurate gps device you plugin that doesnt have the data leak issues concerned in articles like this one. Then if you really needed you could pull out a sort of external monitor stick it over the other display when carplaying and when needing car-vital features you need the car display for, pull over and temporarily do that thing then pull your extra monitor out again and keep going.

I think maybe being grounded has changed - I would be comfortable doing what I described but I imagine your comfort with your preexisting solution means your ground has shifted and a reality check means you woudl rather give away your data than take the higher friction option?

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> features spouses expect to just work

Never underestimate the risks of spousal dissatisfaction.

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You should be using a 50 ohm 1 watt dummy load / termination. It's better at attenuating the signal than leaving the antenna unplugged.
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You're implying the stub of an exposed coax inside a faraday cage is capable of establishing a link with cell towers. This doesn't really pass fermi tests and I've never observed it myself, just read the paranoid concerns of people online.

Regardless, taping some foil around the connectors with the foil making okay contact with the metal chassis is more than enough attenuation at sub GHz microwave to remove this concern without having to source specialty terminations and crimpers (or worse, non-reversible damage to the OEM cable assemblies by repurposing their terminations). I've done the foil+tape on some of my vehicles, but it hasn't made a difference in binary "does it connect or not?" testing.

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Best to use a termination, to avoid the power that would have gone into the antenna from reflecting back into the transmitter output and damaging the output driver transistors. Damage is no bad thing if you do want to permanently disable the transmitter, but not so good if you want it to be reversible. Chances of damage due to reflections is probably low given the relatively low power being transmitted, but best not to take the risk if it can easily be avoided with a termination.
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I agree it's a good practice. However in this case I consider the possibility of frying the amplifier a knock-on benefit. The fucking thing should have never been made.

If a hypothetical future owner feels strongly about it then replacing a telematics module in the dash is much easier than replacing harness runs. I somehow doubt I would sell one of my vehicles to someone who would do that though.

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I wonder if this increases or reduces the value of the car???
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If your buyer is an institution like Carmax or similar, lower.

If your buyer is the end owner, probably increase a little bit unless they are surveillancemaxxing.

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A good question. I'm not really concerned with the answer since I don't plan on selling my cars. I'm sure a good population would pay to not have their car spy on them and I can think of very few that would pay to have it turned on.

Easily reversible mods only affect price for suckers anyway.

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To whom? The owner of the car, or the manufacturer and "their partners"?
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