[mithr]

In Massachusetts, Kia has disabled Kia Connect for all vehicles purchased over the past few years. Any data collected by cars must be made accessible to third-party shops, and Kia opted to disable any data collection (and thus disable Connect entirely) rather than allow that to happen. It doesn't matter where you actually live — as long as you bought in MA, the car's VIN is locked out and no one can do anything about it. You're typically told this at the very end of the sales process, after everything is signed, and it's framed as "oh, by the way, MA has a terrible right-to-repair law that has forced Kia to disable Connect, you should write your state senator."

It's... interesting to see just how easy it is to access this functionality if the VIN check is bypassed.

[stainablesteel]

its brought about a lot of shops that can rip the electronic tracking devices out of your car pretty easily too, which is nice in case you don't feel like being someone's datapoint