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Uber Employees Used the Platform To Stalk Celebrities and Their Exes, Says Former Employee (businessinsider.com)
Uber employees are able to view customer trip information, and many of them are using it to spy on ex-girlfriends and celebrities like Beyonce, according to a former employee. From a report on BusinessInsider: A new piece out from Reveal's Will Evans details Uber's history with security and privacy. The story cites the experience of Ward Spangenberg, Uber's former forensic investigator who was fired from the company last February. Spangenberg is suing Uber for, among other things, wrongful termination, defamation, and age discrimination. In a stunning October court declaration, Spangenberg alleges that Uber employees freely accessed trip information about celebrities and politicians and helped each other spy on ex-boyfriends and ex-girlfriends by tracking where and when they travelled. Spangenberg, who worked at Uber for 11 months, said the company's lack of security violated consumer privacy and data protection regulations.
... you get no sympathy from me.
Pay for a proper taxi, you cheapskates.
Might want to have your ducks in a row before you fire your FORENSIC INVESTIGATOR, who probably knows about all the dirty laundry.
Wow, this thing actually IS just like the regular taxi service.
And now they have the same technology that the phone companies and many other darker parts of the Internet have had for years (so sayeth Snowden). So it's interesting to see what comes of folks who are "unmonitored" and "unregulated" and what they do with the tech. hmm....
Select from tblFriends where interesting >= 4;
I found it!
Just occasionally send the info to your buddy the paparazzo for a small payout.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
Immoral people who are given any type of power over others usually will and do misuse that power. Film at eleven.
I think they accidentally something.
That's what you're surprised about?
My surprise moment was already "Beyonce is considered a celebrity?"
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Constant mistakes in the first sentences of stories is why I read Slashdot less and less.
For a tech-site, they sure cannot learn to use Spell and Grammar checkers.
Uber employees are able to customer trip information...
I think you accidentally a word, msmash.
Any uber "customer" should be nothing more than a random number generated by uber when you request their services.
Of course Beyoncé needs a taxi! She doesn't own a car in every city she visits- even if she can afford to own a car in every city.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
What if my ex is Beyonce?
Blow up dolls with celebrities faces printed on them don't count.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
... total lack of surpise.
"Immoral people who are given any type of power over others usually will and do misuse that power."
Yes, but "normal", healthy, psychologically stable people who are put in positions of power over others will also abuse that power. Look up "Stanford Prison Experiment".
"Power Corrupts" isn't just an adage, it's a real psychological phenomenon. For some reason, power is a corrupting influence on the human psychology. That's what makes government so fundamentally dangerous and so naturally inclined toward corruption.
The normals will do whatever their peers/leadership are doing. If they have immoral peers and leadership, they will act immorally. If they have moral peers and leadership, they will act morally.
Tools can be made to limit access and log it but not eliminate it.
The question is, is there a culture present with the data that treats it as normal or one that thinks privacy violations are vile. Guess we know which culture Uber has now. In that type of culture, the behavior flourishes, until it is caught out by some big mistake or whistle blower. In the other type of culture, the people who think it is okay stick out like a sore thumb and are quickly dealt with.
Silence is a state of mime.
I don't see what your problem is with this. Uber employees are able to throw customers under the feet of information so that it falls over.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
My surprise moment was already "Beyonce is considered a celebrity?"
Believe me, if you had seen the traffic near her concert in San Jose a couple of months ago, you wouldn't be saying stuff like that.
I worked at a credit bureau. As developers we had unlimited access to everyone's data and zero oversight on read access. We could even change people's files and unless we were really stupid no one would catch us. I don't know anyone who was even tempted to abuse the power. No one even looked at their own reports. Even the poor guy who was a victim of identity fraud went through the proper channels (and then updated them because they sucked).
Obligatory SMBC.
Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.
The "Stanford Experiment" was a joke. They chose white-bread middle-class people. Of course these test subjects will do whatever the f*ck they're told to do. If it means being mean, they'll love the chance to cast off the chains of good behavior and be as mean as possible.
They wouldn't last 1 hour with lower class subjects as prisoners, who you can be sure at a few won't take that shit, because they already know that obeying assholes with authority is stupid, that putting fear into the guards is the way to go.
Talk to any prison guard, they'll tell you the inmates run the place. Remember the song "Me and Bobbie McGee?" - "Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose." When you've got people who have little to lose, you'd better tread carefully, because one slip and you're dead. Just takes one guy, everyone will follow.
You'd need 1 guard per prisoner, continuously, and even then ... so in real life everyone on both sides polices their own to make sure the unwritten rules are followed. Guards make sure the bad eggs among them don't get so out of hand as to jeopardize their own individual safety, and prisoners make sure that, as long as the guards behave, the other prisoners don't ruin things for everyone.
They mentioned juveniles as well in the Wikipedia article. Don't think that kids haven't got it figured out - they learn really fast. Just goes to show that the majority of experiments have results that are not applicable in real life.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
This is old news, just newer tech.
I remember in the late 1980s the guys at the auto body shop using the DPS terminal to access the state license plate database and get the name and address info on cute girls they saw in their cars.
The base urges to and desire to gain an advantage if they think there are no consequences have always been there.
Stalking by an employee of an Uber-like company was the subject of an episode of Elementary.
Yay, we're going to join the EU! huzzah!
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
As with almost everything weird that comes out of Uber it'd be interesting to compare this against the rate of this thing happening in existing companies (e.g., taxis, limo services, private car hire, etc).
I'm not excusing the behaviour or trying to justify it or anything (obviously it's obnoxious and gross and creepy and all that). But presumably it's already happening in these other services and understanding whether or not these new tech services are better or worse than the others in this regard would be much more useful information than the occasional scare story about randomly bad actors.
Of course Beyoncé needs a taxi! She doesn't own a car in every city she visits- even if she can afford to own a car in every city.
Yes but when someone like that gets a taxi, they have their minders arrange for the local limousine company to deliver a Maybach and competent driver, they wont order an Uber (Uber is for peasants).
That being said, a lot of artist do travel with their own cars. Bands like the Rolling Stones have a convoy of trucks and not all of them full of guitars.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
What if my ex is Beyonce?
Then you done goofed!
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Considering the traffic jam during the last hurricane, by that metric she could qualify as a natural disaster as well.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
When the Uber app was updated on my phone and I read the disclaimer it creeped me out. I don't know if it helps but I downloaded Lyft and I like it. Lyft treats the divers better too.