Uber Gets Sued Over Alleged 'Hell' Program To Track Lyft Drivers (techcrunch.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Uber has another lawsuit on its hands. This time, it's about Uber's alleged use of a program called "Hell." The plaintiff, Michael Gonzales, drove for Lyft during the time Uber allegedly used the software. He's seeking $5 million in a class action lawsuit. As the story goes, Uber allegedly tracked Lyft drivers using a secret software program internally referred to as "Hell." It allegedly let Uber see how many Lyft drivers were available to give rides, and what their prices were. Hell could allegedly also determine if people were driving for both Uber and Lyft. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleges Uber broadly invaded the privacy of the Lyft drivers, specifically violated the California Invasion of Privacy Act and Federal Wiretap Act and engaged in unfair competition. Uber has not confirmed nor outright denied the claims.

Comments

Corporate espionage

[gweihir]

While older economic branches usually have found a modus to do without this (as it ultimately harms everybody), these "young savages" do not know what it means to be civilized and will apparently do anything for a short-term gain.

Re:How is this even illegal?

[Elfich47]

Lyft drivers were not anonymized. The driver numbers that Lyft assigned were not anonymized and could be used to track drivers over multiple sessions (or weeks). Uber would determine if someone was a Lyft driver in addition to an Uber driver by actively tracking the locations of the Lyft drivers and then correlating it to the locations of the Uber drivers. Also Uber could track which drivers were driving, when they were driving and where they were driving. I wouldn't be surprised if Uber built profiles on all the drivers they were tracking.

Uber changed its compensation package if drivers were also Lyft drivers. Uber would offer better fares to Lyft drivers as an inducement to quit Lyft.

It also means that Uber was tracking Lyft drivers (all Lyft drivers in range) without Lyft's permission and without the driver's permission. While the Lyft drivers may have given permission to Lyft for tracking, they did not give permission to Uber to track them. I expect this to be the crux of the argument.