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Uber Tried To Hide Its Secret IPhone Fingerprinting From Apple (cnbc.com)
theodp quotes today's New York Times profile of Uber CEO Travis Kalanick:
For months, Mr. Kalanick had pulled a fast one on Apple by directing his employees to help camouflage the ride-hailing app from Apple's engineers. The reason? So Apple would not find out that Uber had secretly been tracking iPhones even after its app had been deleted from the devices, violating Apple's privacy guidelines.
Uber told TechCrunch this afternoon that it still uses a form of this device fingerprinting, saying they need a way to identify those devices which committed fraud in the past -- especially in China, where Uber drivers used stolen iPhones to request dozens of rides from themselves to increase their pay rate. It's been modified to comply with Apple's rules, and "We absolutely do not track individual users or their location if they've deleted the app..." an Uber spokesperson said. "Being able to recognize known bad actors when they try to get back onto our network is an important security measure for both Uber and our users."
The article offers a longer biography of Kalanick, who dropped out of UCLA in 1998 to start a peer-to-peer music-sharing service named Scour. (The service eventually declared bankruptcy after being sued for $250 billion for alleged copyright infringement.) Desperately trying to save his next company, Kalanick "took the tax dollars from employee paychecks -- which are supposed to be withheld and sent to the Internal Revenue Service," according to the Times, "and reinvested the money into the start-up, even as friends and advisers warned him the action was potentially illegal." The money eventually reached the IRS as he "staved off bankruptcy for a second time by raising another round of funding." But the article ultimately argues that Kalanick's drive to win in life "has led to a pattern of risk-taking that has put his ride-hailing company on the brink of implosion."
Uber told TechCrunch this afternoon that it still uses a form of this device fingerprinting, saying they need a way to identify those devices which committed fraud in the past -- especially in China, where Uber drivers used stolen iPhones to request dozens of rides from themselves to increase their pay rate. It's been modified to comply with Apple's rules, and "We absolutely do not track individual users or their location if they've deleted the app..." an Uber spokesperson said. "Being able to recognize known bad actors when they try to get back onto our network is an important security measure for both Uber and our users."
The article offers a longer biography of Kalanick, who dropped out of UCLA in 1998 to start a peer-to-peer music-sharing service named Scour. (The service eventually declared bankruptcy after being sued for $250 billion for alleged copyright infringement.) Desperately trying to save his next company, Kalanick "took the tax dollars from employee paychecks -- which are supposed to be withheld and sent to the Internal Revenue Service," according to the Times, "and reinvested the money into the start-up, even as friends and advisers warned him the action was potentially illegal." The money eventually reached the IRS as he "staved off bankruptcy for a second time by raising another round of funding." But the article ultimately argues that Kalanick's drive to win in life "has led to a pattern of risk-taking that has put his ride-hailing company on the brink of implosion."
I was checking price on an Uber and installed the app for the first time. I ended up using a regular car service because the price differential wasn't enough to overcome the "who knows who is coming to pick me up" issue. So now my phone is fingerprinted, great.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
what is it with black people and the bus stop? anytime you see a bus stop, there is always a black person there.
i would bet money that if you put a bus stop in the middle of sibera, hundreds of miles from anyone and left it for a few hours, when you return there would be black people in it. stereotypical black people too. there will be an old man holding a bicycle tire on the rim, muttering to himself. there will be a fat black girl on her cellphone talking too loud and shaking her finger while doing the "mmmhmm" thing. lastly there will be a 20-something thug-life wanna-be with bloodshot eyes.
black people and the bus stop, it's a mystery.
The Uber CEO needs to go. He's what's keeping Uber from being great.
"has led to a pattern of risk-taking that has put his taxi company on the brink of implosion."
There. FTFY.
there must be a Clinton angle somewhere
I have a used iPhone :/ Guess it was owned by a "bad actor"
The *tracking* is based on Uber saving device UDID, so that they know who you are even if you later reinstall the app and use a different account. While Uber is evil in many ways, this UDID "tracking" is not what the article makes it appear - Uber certainly cannot "track" anyone in any way once their app has been removed.
In fact, I am not sure why go to such great lengths to obtain UDID when device MAC address is readily available (and must be for variety of software to work) and globally unique.
This also smacks of those scaremongering sites that start with a banner like "Your computer is broadcasting a unique IP address" and lead to hard sell of overpriced VPN service or bs apps to "hide your IP".
Example news stories about Uber in the past year:
* Some workplace culture problems within Uber (sexual harassment).
* Uber took measures to detect if some ride requests were actually from government employees attempting to entrap drivers who are not allowed to drive in a particular area.
* Uber CEO takes Uber ride and berates driver who criticized payment terms.
* Uber acquired real-time map of drivers for a competing service by tricky data mining.
And, now this latest story about a mechanism to fingerprint iPhones to detect fraud.
I have taken Uber dozens of times, and I LOVE all aspects of the service!
I'm glad that the vigilance of the media compels Uber to work harder to be a scrupulous and ethical company, but the series of critical stories seems a bit like a negative campaign or mob mentality dog-piling, without noting how Uber continues to improve the lives of millions (by increasing the efficiency of people traveling between places, and improving rider experience (with driver ratings, and full routes and driver info indicated in receipts, and tracking drivers for accurate pick-up estimation), reducing drunk-driving rates because of truly convenient service).
I feel like the overwhelmingly positive aspects of Uber are not often part of the commentary, and so these revelations often seems to be considered without a reasonable sense of overall perspective.
A taxi company, whose business model is entirely based on breaking laws, violate the rules of another company. Is anyone surprised?
Next up: Drug traffickers speed and run red lights.
n/t
Just saying. It sends a huge message that it values user privacy.
This is what should have happened when cook met with him. Cook should have said, you broke the rules, the app is no longer on iphone. The problem with the uber guy is his go to method is break the law. Be it taxi regs, IRS regs... Lately he has enhanced his methods to actively avoid detection. In apple's case, he used geofencing so apple corp did not see the code, which sounds a little like the VW thing on emissions testing. Uber also was detecting when law enforcement was requesting rides, don't remember why. It makes one wonder, what other laws is uber successfully evading?
Uber is actually a good example of what's going wrong with the world: They are openly criminal and it works. It's Al Capone all over again. Everyone knows what they are doing, but they're too slippery to be nailed.
Same with the tax evasion of multinational cooperation, wars based on invented bullshit, election frauds done almost openly (like in Turkey), and so on.
Minority Report may have been on to something: The legal system working after the fact, and with a delay often measured in years, does not deter criminals. If you can take over a country, or become a billionaire, the threat that ten years from now they might file charges which your $1000/h lawyers will then simply drag through the courts for twenty years - well, that is not a very threatening thing especially for people trained to think primarily about next quarter.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Bigly winning?
Uber is trying to set itself up to be the evil corporation that owns everything 100 years from now, but they've got a long way to go to catch the front runners, so they're cheating as hard as they can to make up ground.
Way to use Google maps to measure Denver instead of a car. Took me 45 minutes to get from E470 to 144th this weekend.
This is what should have happened when Cook met with him.
Actually, what should have happened is that Cook said: Look, not only did you break our app store rules, but you actively added code to keep is from detecting it. So your app is rejected, will be removed from everyone's phone, your developer account is closed, and you won't be allowed to create a new one.
20 years ago, you could get from the airport to evergreen in 45 minutes. Now? Every fuckhead escaping SoCal is driving slowly in the left lane, fucking up traffic.
... And Apple doesn't want the competition. Apple doesn't want competition on tracking users. Apple doesn't want competition on mindshare. Apple doesn't allow competition for developers. Hell, all of Apple's "security" is merely protection of the walled garden. You feel,safe in their prison, but that's an illusion. It's to keep you in.
This Kalanick sounds like a real winner: "took the tax dollars from employee paychecks -- which are supposed to be withheld and sent to the Internal Revenue Service," ... , "and reinvested the money into the start-up, even as friends and advisers warned him the action was potentially illegal."
Stop fucking with people's lives asshole.
Red Swoosh is just Bittorrent with its own, private trackers.
$19M was a really low price. Akamai got a great deal on that technology.
Kriston