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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.
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
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".
It's where they pick up capital letters. You know, because they aren't red neck pieces of shit who cannot understand how fucking English is written after at least two decades of daily exposure.
It's not just rednecks who can't speak or write English well. Plenty of supposedly educated people can't write English
well. I see it every day on Slashdot, and in many other places which supposedly are frequented by "intelligent"
people.
Aside from that, there's plenty you don't know. Rednecks are not all stupid whether they can use English properly or not. Spend some time around them and you will realize this is true. If civilization collapses many ( most ) rednecks will know how to hunt for food and thus be able to feed themselves. Whereas a punk like you will be starving or begging those rednecks to share some of their food.
Some day ( if you ever grow up ) you may come to discover that everyone knows something you don't know, and that your
knowledge set doesn't make you superior in all frames of reference.
Oh, and you calling white people rednecks is fundamentally no different than someone else calling a black person a n___r.
The only difference is that you mistakenly believe you hold a morally superior position, in the manner of so many social justice
warrior idiots who could not think in an independent critical manner if their lives depended on it.
what is it with black people and the bus stop?
It's a convenient way to avoid people like you.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Donald Trump? Is that you?
If Uber breaks the law, and only Lyft hears it, has it made a sound?
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.
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.
I'm sure there's some level of astroturfing going on, after all Uber does have enemies, but I think there's also a lot of fire to go with this smoke.
The thing to realize with Uber is that their business is built on breaking the law, specifically Taxi regulations. Now you can make defences for their strategy and the unethical nature of taxi regs, but when your business is built around breaking rules it gets baked into your company's DNA.
Uber is going to keep committing ethical missteps because it's a company that's learned that breaking rules is fine as long as the reward exceeds the penalty.
I stole this Sig
SJW. .. for the longest time i thought this was Single Jewish Woman , like in the personals at the back of NYRB.
Now I find it's Social Justice Warrior, derogative ironically?
breaking rules is fine as long as the reward exceeds the penalty.
The word you're looking for is 'capitalism'.
Anybody who played Wolfenstein 3D and Doom knows that BFG stands for 'big fucking gun.' Amazing that Disney made a whole movie about those guns, and for a childrens audience, too!
breaking rules is fine as long as the reward exceeds the penalty.
The word you're looking for is 'capitalism'.
I guess so, though I think the real issue is that business people basically think of these laws the same way a hockey player thinks about the rules of hockey. Sure, you're not supposed to hook another player, but you're going to end up hooking sometimes because that's how the game goes, and sometimes even if you're caught the reward is big enough that it's considered a "good penalty". In this context people like Kalanick are basically hockey pests, people who succeed by their ability to skirt as close to the edge of the rules as possible.
Or perhaps they think about things like fraud, false advertising, and ripping off employees the way we think of traffic violations. You're not supposed to speed, but everyone does it to some extent.
I'm not sure what has to be done to make politicians and companies take law-breaking companies seriously, but it doesn't seem to be happening.
I stole this Sig
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
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.
Is this Fox News or Info Wars? No, so no it isn't Trump. p.s. The fact that this site has text on it should have given it away as well.
It's Mike Pence. He's worked out that Slashdot is the one part of the internet where he can guarantee he won't end up talking to a woman.
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
I'm glad that the vigilance of the media compels Uber to work harder to be a scrupulous and ethical company
Uber has exactly the same interest in being a scrupulous and ethical company as it has always had: zero. The only ethical way to deal with a company like Uber is to refuse to do business with them.