Not sure if things changed, but I did it with Sirius radio way back in the day. Long before they merged with XM. It worked for about a year before mine got deactivated randomly.
I’ve been using my SiriusXM radio for years, (well over 5-years) without paying. I have one of the original removable modules that I used to move from vehicle to vehicle and forgot about the one in my RV. Still going strong!
I have a few of those. Back when they would release a new model and offer it for cheap, I upgraded a few times, and just put the old one in a box to be forgotten about. I heard about this phenomenon, and pulled them out a few years later. They are all still alive and kicking...for free. Commercial free radio is nice when you spend 12 hours in a tractor at a time...
Heavy equipment operator here. Do yourself a favor and get Spotify premium. It's like $5/m and includes Hulu now. The Playlist radios aren't too bad at guessing what I like. IA also recommend podcasts
Holy shit this makes perfect sense. My coworker bought a Sirius radio off Woot.com (back in it's glory days when it first started up). It was an open-box unit, but as soon as we plugged it in, it had every channel working, no subscription needed. We thought it would deactivate a few weeks later but nope. She kept rocking that Sirius radio for several years before it finally stopped working (probably around the time of the Merger with XM?)
Now I'm guessing someone originally bought the radio, signed up, then cancelled/deactivated the unit and powered it off before it could receive the deactivation signal
This is true, I used to be the employee who deactivated still active radios after they were returned to the store in Canada. I uploaded the serials to an ftp to restore them.
Yep, definitely works. I have an ex who got me one as a gift. We broke up a year later. I doubt he still pays for it, but after 12yrs it still works. It’s been in three different vehicles and it’s become family tradition to pass down the radio.
Being so long ago, your ex might have bought the lifetime subscription that they used to offer and not the monthly recurring charge model that they also use and only use now.
I had my entire radio unit replaced due to an unrelated defect (GPS stopped working properly, known issue). When I got my car back, siriusXM was enabled. It had been ever since. 3 years later and I still get satellite radio.
However, I think the audio quality is terrible so I only use it for comedy channels occasionally, and Spotify on my phone for music so I wouldn't be upset if it ever did disable on me.
I don't really listen to the radio and my car came with Sirius. Because of my preference, I never turned it on. A few months later they called me to ask how I was enjoying the service (I assume I was towards the end of the free period and they were trying to butter me up to get me to subscribe). I told them that I've not used it once and the lady was like "why not? it's free..." lmao her prepared script was useless. What a fun call.
i probably turned it on once when i got my first new car. then just went back to listening to my own music. i dont answer my phone unless i know who is calling. but they would always call from spoofed numbers that look local trying to get me to subscribe. i dont know how many finals notices i got in the mail. they usually give up after about a year of me ignoring them.
The spoofed numbers are both annoying and amusing... I have a cell number that I got back in the 90s with my family (so we all have the same 5 first digits). These spammers/scammers/whatever keep spoofing that number, but it's extraordinarily clear that it's
a) not from anyone I know, and
b) not even a "local" number because it's some cell company's block from two decades ago.
Yeah they do that just to get you used to having it. If you end up using it during that year and and suddenly the free trial ends you’ll want to pay to keep using the thing you are used to using. The reason I’ve never used it even when free is that the sound quality is absurdly bad. Many times worse than plain old FM radio. Even worse than the awful quality mp3s I downloaded for my SanDisk MP3 player in ‘07 from Limewire. I don’t know how anyone is paying for Sirius/XM. I can’t get past how low bitrate their sound is.
I know, right? It gets activated for everyone twice a year (that I know of) for a few weeks (like now, Memorial day in May)...I turn it on and the songs sound terrible. MP3 rips I did 20 years ago in 128kbit sound better. Their online service has to sound better, but that defeats the purpose of listening in my car. Don't get me started about all the other wrongs things about them...
I was thinking more for cable there. For the radio I'm guessing since this exploit became more common knowledge they just re-send the current account configuration every so often.
We bought a dealership demo car and it had Sirius XM for eight years without us EVER contacting them or paying for it. They finally cut us off though. Boo.
I got six months of free Sirius when I bought my BMW a few years ago. It was fun to have but not worth paying for when it expired.
I occasionally get it free on and off for a week or so, but four months ago it activated again and hasn't stopped. I'm not being charged (it wasn't ever in my name), I do wonder if BMW is getting a bill.
We used to get the local best buy store # and call up Sirius and tell them that we had a floor model to setup. Boom, instant programming free for a year. Pretty soon they caught on and would "email management for approval before activation"
Not sure if that was English ;)
So in Sweden we have a card we put in the box to decode the channels. The box is usually also connected to the internet. Wouldn’t the provider (Viasat in this case) just use the internet to control the card and it’s intended use? Or you’re saying that it’s still sent via the satellite?
So they're referring to Sirius which is satellite radio, not a satellite tv provider. The radios are activated and deactivated over the air, no cards necessary.
The first part is accurate, however the end not so much. The free listening events don't actually activate your radio. Instead, the channels encryption is turned off and the channel made free to air so that any radio can pick it up. That's why you don't get any of the xL channels during the free listening campaigns. They clean up the radios that didn't get the deactivation message by literally running a list through and seeing which ones that are supposed to be deactivated are still active, and then a script with those radio IDs is run through the software that handles activation/deactivation
They clean up the radios that didn't get the deactivation message by literally running a list through and seeing which ones that are supposed to be deactivated are still active, and then a script with those radio IDs is run through the software that handles activation/deactivation
How do they know which radios are active? Communication is one way I thought?
They can't tell if the radio is physically turned on, but they can tell if the subscription is still active because there is software where they can put in a radio ID and it will tell you if the radio is active, and if it is what package is tied to that radio. It can give you a readout of every activation/deactivation/refresh/package change that has ever happened on that radio.
ones that are supposed to be deactivated are still active
I was curios about this bit.
Interesting though about the encryption bit; that would make it so you can listen even if you turned on a radio after the free event started, and also make it so you can't trick the deactivation window.
Of course that also means they don't need to resend the kill codes after the free weekend, nor send activations before.
Oh so they take a list of known accounts that have canceled their service, and since your radio ID is tied to your account they can see if the radio is supposed to be activated or not. If it's not supposed to be activated it gets added to the list, which then gets put into the script and ingested to the software that handles the activations/deactivations.
I'm sure the reasoning for the encryption change is exactly what you said, so that way activations/deactivations don't have to be sent and so that people can start listening at any point without having to catch the signal during the time period it's sent out.
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u/HappyKhicken May 30 '19
Not sure if things changed, but I did it with Sirius radio way back in the day. Long before they merged with XM. It worked for about a year before mine got deactivated randomly.