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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."
You don't already assume your smartphone is being fingerprinted and tracked?! That's the first thing anyone using such a device should assume.
"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".
Worried about what they are seeing you do, then let them see a whole bunch of stuff you do not do, why try to steam the flow of your privacy when you can deluge them with a flood http://www.cs.nyu.edu/trackmen... and https://adnauseam.io/. I am also thinking email games might be interesting to floor every possible channel with useless information, even all the spy vs spy stuff. Say an email game where one side plots to assassinate the president of Ameriganislav and the other plays as agents, trading emails with plots and encryption for the other side break, when side plotting the assasination and the other side trying to foil the plot a game to punish the professionally paranoid illegally spying on everyone with a flood of suggestive data to poison spy data bases, the game run from a web site.
So as many way as possible to generate false data at many, many mutliples of real data generated. A personal profile made totally meaningness and as a bonus the more you generate the more they must spend to store it. Double their data storage bill, triple it, how about increasing storage requirements hundreds of times over. Think of all the time, you are not on there internet but your computer could be, generating volumes of false empty data, hundreds of thousands of web visits you never went to, hundred of thousands of searches you never did, emails you never sent, your computer and software flooding marketers with empty data they have to pay to store.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
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
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
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
The Uber CEO needs to go. He's what's keeping Uber from being great.
From what I hear about Uber, it seems they in so many ways act and think like criminals, but manage to keep just on the legal side of the law. Mostly. That said, though, they are just an extreme example of all the worst aspects of capitalism: the underhandedness, the ethos that says 'if we can get away with it, it must be OK', the lack of genuine care and consideration for their employees, customers and society, the sense of entitlement take what they want no matter what.
It is really sad, I think - there is a good kind of capitalism, where a clever, hardworking man or woman can grow a business from little more than their own abilities and determination, but the whole concept gets a grubby taint from the likes of Uber.
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.