Uber CEO Plays with Fire

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/23/technology/travis-kalanick-pushes-uber-and-himself-to-the-precipice.html

by bmahmood • 9 years ago

559 481 9 years ago

nytimes.com

h1fra• 9 years ago

No one seems to explain how Uber could track user when the have deleted the app ?

It look more like an hack more than "a lack of boundaries" to me...

trendia• 9 years ago

And what benefit would they receive from knowing the location of people who don't even use the service?

sjilo• 9 years ago

They could find them and convince them to reinstall.

calbear81• 9 years ago

They use location tracking even when you're not using the app to predict where the demand might be going and to get data for future products like the Uber Shuttle which runs fixed routes.

solox3• 9 years ago

Demand mapping, driver supply allocation, more accurate surge pricing for the rest of us with the app...

rafe333• 9 years ago

If you read the article, it helped ensure that no drivers were scamming them by creating repeat fake customer accounts to increase the payout bonus.

zdrummond• 9 years ago

If I remember the old article, it was not that they could track after the app was deleted, but after the user had exited the app... after they had finished their Uber ride and went on their way

snissn• 9 years ago

Which potentially could give them the feedback of answering the question "how close to their actual destination did their uber driver drop them off?"

monochromatic• 9 years ago

That's a lot more plausible. Tracking after you've deleted the app would be pretty surprising.

swang• 9 years ago

no that was "legal" in the sense that they forced users to turn on location and they stated they would track you up to 5 minutes after you left your uber, for "safety" reasons.

this article is talking about something else it seems.

marklyon• 9 years ago

…and, if true, exposes significant concerns about the OS. I'm less concerned about Uber exploiting this flaw than some far more malicious actor.

ajross• 9 years ago

That's what I'm asking too. This is the first reporting of what sure sounds like an iOS security vulnerability exploited by the Uber app, and there's no technical content at all, it's just a description of a phone call between two executives. Come on, NYT!

geofft7• 9 years ago

There's technical content at the bottom of the article:

To halt the activity, Uber engineers assigned a persistent identity to iPhones with a small piece of code, a practice called “fingerprinting.” Uber could then identify an iPhone and prevent itself from being fooled even after the device was erased of its contents.

There was one problem: Fingerprinting iPhones broke Apple’s rules. Mr. Cook believed that wiping an iPhone should ensure customers that no trace of the owner’s identity remained on the device.

tedmiston8• 9 years ago

Currently, and until they re-allow in-app location only as an option, I block Uber with no location access and only enable it while I'm requesting a ride, then block it again after it's started. A little tedious but it's better than giving them full background location — it's also resulted in me using Lift more.

zzalpha3• 9 years ago

They mention fingerprinting in the article.

Uber engineers assigned a persistent identity to iPhones with a small piece of code, a practice called “fingerprinting.” Uber could then identify an iPhone and prevent itself from being fooled even after the device was erased of its contents.

There was one problem: Fingerprinting iPhones broke Apple’s rules. Mr. Cook believed that wiping an iPhone should ensure customers that no trace of the owner’s identity remained on the device.

I expect what they do is fingerprint the device to detect fraudulent use later. Typically this is done by combining a bunch of identifiers and details on the device and then hashing the result. The output is a unique identifier for that specific device.

While technically this doesn't store any "identity" information on the device itself, if done correctly, the device could be identified and tracked across wipes (hence Cook's comment).

Of course, the article does a piss poor job explaining this, but for many readers the nuance doesn't matter... They capture the spirit well enough, even if the details are pretty misleading.

geofft7• 9 years ago

The article means "track" in the sense of "uniquely identify the physical device," not "send location information." Uber had code that would persistently identify which device was being used across two different installations of the app, even if the device had been factory-reset. (I suppose they could do something like find the MAC address, although Apple has been making that harder.)

Furthermore, that code wasn't triggered, somehow, in devices near Cupertino, indicating that they were trying to hide the code from App Store reviwers.

I think I feel that this is very qualitatively different from gathering location data on users who have deleted the app (if such a thing were possible), but nevertheless a serious ethical lapse.

pthreads• 9 years ago

In this case, by tracking, it means the device's unique identity via fingerprinting. It does not mean location tracking or other similar information. So if multiple accounts are created on the same device (deleting the app in between) it would indicate that those accounts are fraudulent accounts. The issue with location tracking even when the Uber app is not running is a different issue.

In my opinion Apple should have suspended their app from the iTunes App Store until they fixed the app. Because isn't that what they do to other small players? I would say there is a bit of hypocrisy on Apple's part here.

_delirium• 9 years ago

If you add in the part where they "geofenced" Apple's headquarters, so the app behaved differently in that location than elsewhere in order to hide what it was doing, I'm not sure anyone else would even be merely suspended. Explicitly trying to hide your app behavior from App Store reviewers is such an overt sign that your app is doing something bad that it'll get anyone else's developer account banned from the app store entirely.

mdorazio• 9 years ago

Does anyone know if the animation of Travis at the beginning is actually hand-drawn or uses some kind of After Effects/Photoshop plugin?

electic• 9 years ago

It is a series of sketches looping together. Background movie, nothing special.

chinathrow3• 9 years ago

I think the parent was asking whether the single sketches were hand drawn or made with some filters within photoshop.

tyingq4• 9 years ago

I would guess hand drawn. Every pencil sketch effect I've seen leaves more detail, for example, in the hair. Or if you dial that down, you lose detail in features you want to keep, like the nose. The image that's being discussed: https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/04/19/technology/24trav...

tedmiston8• 9 years ago

That drew attention from regulators. In October 2010, the company shortened its name to Uber after receiving a cease-and-desist letter from San Francisco officials for marketing itself as a taxi company without the proper licenses and permits.

That's kind of surprising.

lutusp• 9 years ago

Quote: "In a quest to build Uber into the world’s dominant ride-hailing entity, Mr. Kalanick has openly disregarded many rules and norms, backing down only when caught or cornered. He has flouted transportation and safety regulations, bucked against entrenched competitors and capitalized on legal loopholes and gray areas to gain a business advantage."

This is classic malignant narcissism[1]. The irony of the story is that it describes a confrontation with Apple, which became successful through the machinations of another malignant narcissist, Steve Jobs.

1. https://arachnoid.com/ChildrenOfNarcissus

vitaminbandit2• 9 years ago

Did you just diagnose someone with a condition that isn't found in the DSM and then cite your own website as a source of evidence?

the_duke• 9 years ago

The linked page is indeed ridiculous. Don't bother.

But: Narcissistic Personality Disorder: DSM-5 301.81

Also mentioned but not properly defined in ICD (F60.8)

sctb• 9 years ago

This type of unsubstantive, inflammatory comment has a wholly predictable and undesirable effect on these threads. Please don't post like this here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

taude3• 9 years ago

I really hope Lyft doesn't do anything to screw up, as I've uninstalled Uber and will probably never use the service again. However, I don't see myself going back to regular taxi system as that's even more corrupt and despicable.

I just hope Lyft plays the game with a social conscious and makes positive decisions and continues to treat drivers well (most Lyft drivers I talk to say they like driving for Lyft way better than Uber).

I'm not so sure that as a society we should be rewarding people with drive like this "Mr. Kalanick, 40, is driven to the point that he must win at whatever he puts his mind to and at whatever cost".

zitterbewegung• 9 years ago

I don't think you can support a ridesharing company that by design treats employees as contractors and also be socially conscious . If you really want to do this use public transportation .

taude3• 9 years ago

Yes, "socially conscious" isn't really the ride adjective I was looking for...something more like integrity, or even positive ethics, but that's not the work either.

ars2• 9 years ago

I don't think you can support a ridesharing company that by design treats employees as contractors and also be socially conscious .

I fail to see what one has to do with the other. Can you explain?

Seems to me the opposite is the case - as a contractor the driver has full control, but as an employee how hard he works has little to do with how much he gets paid.

smoyer• 9 years ago

Uber isn't really ride-sharing anymore.

bmelton• 9 years ago

I don't think you can support a ridesharing company that by design treats employees as contractors and also be socially conscious

I don't understand why not. I have a total of five friends who have each chosen to drive for various ridesharing companies, and in the conversations I've had with them, it seems pretty clear that none of them would be drivers if they couldn't set their own schedules, or if they were otherwise treated as actual employees.

To be fair, only one of them is driving as their main source of income; the other four are driving to supplement their day jobs for side money. The flexible schedule is crucial to that. The fifth prefers flexible scheduling as well. Though he might otherwise be considered a 'full time' employee, he working a schedule around a non-standard custodial agreement with his ex-wife, which means he might drive for 14-15 hours in one day, and none in another.

jeffdavis• 9 years ago

The only thing fundamental about Lyft is that you use an app to request a ride and Lyft helps route that to a nearby driver. That sounds like a completely reasonable business that serves a useful need.

Whether the drivers are employees, contractors, or volunteers is an implementation detail. If laws, public opinion, or economics change, the fundamental business still seems reasonable and useful.

morgante3• 9 years ago

I don't think you can support a ridesharing company that by design treats employees as contractors and also be socially conscious

You state that like it's a proven fact, when it's anything but. I personally think it's farcical to treat Uber drivers as employees. They have no set schedule, location, or expectations. They're constantly making ad-hoc decisions on which rides to accept.

The closest analogue is traditional taxi drivers, who also aren't employees.

mahyarm2• 9 years ago

You don't think medallion taxi drivers are not contractors also? Ask you next taxi driver how much he is paying to rent his taxi and how it all works. Maybe he'll be an employee, but more likely he will be paying a flat fee of $3000/month to the medallion owner and doesn't make money for himself until he's paid off that debt. And that is in my small hometown of 300k people.

valuearb10• 9 years ago

I'm a contractor, am I somehow less socially desirable to you?

ForHackernews2• 9 years ago

I'm not so sure that as a society we should be rewarding people with drive like this "Mr. Kalanick, 40, is driven to the point that he must win at whatever he puts his mind to and at whatever cost".

I hope he loses big. Losing everything because of a sociopathic drive to win? That's the stuff of classical tragedy.

pavlov• 9 years ago

The American obsession with winning has definitely jumped the shark with Kalanick and Trump. At least I'm getting tired of all this "winning".

rhino369• 9 years ago

regular taxi system as that's even more corrupt and despicable.

The idea that the taxis are corrupt and despicable is 100% Uber/Lyft propaganda.

The idea that a bunch of immigrants driving 12 hours a day to support a meager income for their families are a cabal of special interests is ridiculous.

Uber and Lyft are better than taxis because of the on demand nature and they are cheaper because of better utilization. But there is no need to make taxi drivers out to be evil.

cmahler7• 9 years ago

they're cheaper because they can subsidize their fares via VC money

threatofrain• 9 years ago

The taxi system seems more negative to immigrants as it cuts off the number of opportunities for making a living in a low skill market. It's not that the taxi drivers are "negative", it's the system they inhabit and defend. If it supports any immigrants, it's because they already got into the limited-slot system, while the vast bulk of immigrants are outside.

And on the consumer side, consumers are afraid of being cheated, they deal with more payment uncertainty, and the prices are inflated.

wlesieutre• 9 years ago

I don't think anyone's claiming all taxi drivers are corrupt any more than they're saying that about Uber. Complaints I've heard are all about the medallion structure, pressure from taxi groups to block new car services, and comparatively inconsistent/crappy service.

And the taxi drivers can't get out of a crappy taxi company and start their own because of the expensive taxi medallions, so they're stuck with it as much as we are.

sillysaurus32• 9 years ago

I've never seen anyone argue that taxi drivers are evil. The argument is that taxi companies are yet another example of companies that have co-opted the legal system to further their business. For example, you're not allowed to operate a taxi service. Nor are you allowed to give someone a ride for money.

lkbm• 9 years ago

I don't hate taxi drivers. I hate taxi companies. Same with Uber.

You can ignore that distinction, but you're just going to be arguing against a straw man, which might feel satisfying, but will get you nowhere.

valuearb10• 9 years ago

The immigrants driving 12 hours a day are paying hella rents to the taxi companies for that privilege. There is a reason NYC taxi medallions were being traded for over $1M, because the taxi companies lobbied to limit the supply of taxis and were making massive profits leasing those medallions to drivers.

koolba• 9 years ago

The problem with taxis isn't corruption (at the driver level). It's that the service is uniformly terrible. There's no incentive to improve as you'll likely never see the same driver twice. The drivers don't care because it's not worth to them to care.

Add to that the issue that every taxi ride I've taken in recent memory involved the driver spending the entire ride complaining about the low fare (which is 2x the UberX fare). The first time it was an interesting conversation but by the 10th it's just annoying and one more reason to dread taking a yellow cab.

pfranz• 9 years ago

The idea that the taxis are corrupt and despicable is 100% Uber/Lyft propaganda.

I just can't see how that could be said with any seriousness unless you've never used a taxi. I'm not saying Uber/Lyft are without their own faults. I've never really had /that/ much experience with taxis, but on my few interactions encountered in the US:

* (after arriving at the destination) Sorry, my credit card machine is broken. I can drive you to an ATM if you'd like? This is a common taxi scam and many places have laws to protect against it. After arguing they pull out the old slide machine.

* When traveling only the minimum fare distance, "These trips really aren't allowed."

* Use their website to schedule a few days before my flight--nobody shows. Call their dispatch phone number, "Oh, the website never really works. Someone will be there in 40 minutes." A taxi shows up over an hour later.

gregshap• 9 years ago

100% Uber/Lyft propaganda?

There's a difference between saying taxi drivers are evil, and saying that the taxi system is a corrupt special interest.

The 'system' is not just drivers, in most large US Cities it's a few concentrated medallion owners, strongly motivated to lobby against diluting their share of the taxi market. Dilution could come from regulatory changes, or just allowing more medallions.

What is a 'special interest' anyway? Medallion owners represented a concentrated minority of the population with strong motivation to push for policies that are neutral or harmful to the majority. But since the harm is spread among the many, and the benefit is concentrated in the few, the few are more organized and willing to expend time and money to achieve their goal. And yup now ride sharing apps are a new special interest.

That's just the political economy. There's also the fact that in many cities the cab titans were operating like corrupt slumlords, while local law enforcement long seemed willfully ignorant.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/08/03/fallen-taxi-kin...

odonnellryan6• 9 years ago

Taxi's have regulations and laws they have to follow. It isn't a perfect system, but you know there are certain precautions Taxi drivers are taking.

You have a different kind of safety with Uber. There are always tradeoffs.

loso• 9 years ago

No this not Uber propaganda. The NYC taxi union did horrible crap while I lived in NYC. For example, before the rise of Uber Yellow cabs would do their best not to service Uptown and places like it. So instead we had a replacement service which were known as "gypsy cabs". Basically town cars that weren't supposed to pick up people on the street, only by appointment, but they did anyway.

This happened so much that Bloomberg said screw it and was basically turned a blind eye to what they were doing and let them operate. The NYC Taxi Union got pissed and complained. But while complaining they still basically said in so many words that they still weren't going to service the area. They just didn't want anyone else to.

I had a cab driver pick up my ex girlfriend and her coworkers and pull something shady along the lines of this. They were being dropped in mid town. She was being dropped off uptown. When he dropped her coworkers off, he drove a few more blocks and stopped the cab and told her she had to get out. He wasn't going to drive all the way to Uptown.

So yeah I was glad when Uber gave them competition. Now when I go to NYC I have no problems out of the cab drivers like I used to.

bhuga• 9 years ago

The idea that the taxis are corrupt and despicable is 100% Uber/Lyft propaganda.

Here's links to stories of investigations into taxi bureaus and dispatchers for bribery and other schemes in 3 states:

http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2011/06/federal_investig... http://astoriapost.com/taxi-dispatchers-arrested-for-alleged... https://nypost.com/2014/03/19/16-jfk-taxi-dispatchers-busted...

Perhaps there's a city where Taxis are a good, clean business, but there are enough bad ones to support the generalization.

The idea that a bunch of immigrants driving 12 hours a day to support a meager income for their families are a cabal of special interests is ridiculous.

There's a distinction between the drivers and the taxi regulatory agencies and dispatchers in the above stories. In this case, Uber/Lyft are replacing the agencies and dispatchers that are the bad actors, not the drivers. Your point about not making drivers out to be evil is well taken, but I don't think that's what anyone refers when they talk about "the evil taxi industry."

gnopgnip• 9 years ago

Uber and Lyft are cheaper because the drivers are paid substantially less and they do not properly account for the depreciation and other costs of driving. It is much cheaper for a taxi company to maintain a fleet of vehicles, and depreciation and maintenance are much more expensive than the only thing most drivers care about, gas.

santaclaus• 9 years ago

But there is no need to make taxi drivers out to be evil.

Maybe not 'evil', but I'm curious about these amazing experiences people have with cabs (US-centric here).

In NYC, cab drivers would refuse to drive to areas they deemed undesirable. I'm not even talking someone taking non-Manhattan rides, I would occasionally have cab drivers refuse to take me to Harlem from lower Manhattan. Cabs refusing to pick up non-white passengers is a common thing. Hell, even basic things like trying to get a dispatched cab to pick one up for an airport could be a disaster (during my time in Portland, I think I tried getting a Radio Cab to the airport three times, they never showed up).

Uber and Lyft are better than taxis because of the on demand nature and they are cheaper because of better utilization.

Hell, I would pay more for an Uber of Lyft just because of the reliability of the service.

morgante3• 9 years ago

The idea that the taxis are corrupt and despicable is 100% Uber/Lyft propaganda.

Have you ever actually used a taxi?

It's incredibly common for taxi drivers to refuse to pick you up because you don't look desirable, or aren't going to the right place, or want to use a credit card, or any other reason (all of which are totally illegal). They flout the rules regularly, it's by no means propaganda.

LoSboccacc3• 9 years ago

have you been to Italy? maybe your situation is better, but here is a cesspool.

vermontdevil2• 9 years ago

Speak for yourself. Many deaf and deaf/blind people absolutely detest the taxi industry. They treat us like shit. Over and over.

I've been kicked out of cabs more than once when the driver learned I'm deaf and I would give them the address of my destination on paper. Got kicked out because I was signing with my friend in the back. Etc.

nilkn3• 9 years ago

Lyft desperately needs to expand the list of cities they serve. I'm in Houston, the fourth largest city in the US, and for several years Uber has operated here but Lyft still doesn't.

ktta2• 9 years ago

In a way large cities are harder to get into so the qualifier of it being large is actually detrimental. My opinion is that smaller cities are easier to tackle, so in case anything goes wrong, they can be corrected easily, and after a couple mistakes and lessons, they'll be ready for the big boys.

maxerickson7• 9 years ago

It'd be nice if Apple had been less pragmatic and more principled and just yanked any version of the Uber app that broke the rules.

distances• 9 years ago

I tend to agree, companies with loads of technical and legal resources should be expected to follow the rules even more carefully.

macspoofing5• 9 years ago

That only seems like the right move because this week you hate Uber.

maxerickson7• 9 years ago

No, I'm pretty indifferent to Uber.

Read plainly, I'd call my comment a criticism of Apple and people that might be congratulating them for working the issue out behind the scenes.

cabaalis• 9 years ago

When there's that much VC money on the line, breaking the rules gets you a meeting with Tim Cook.

ryanwaggoner• 9 years ago

Tim Cook doesn't give a flying fig what VCs think.

macspoofing5• 9 years ago

I would say the fact that the Uber app is installed on millions (or hundreds of millions) of iPhones is what gets you a meeting with Tim Cook.

harryh3• 9 years ago

Uber has millions of people who use and love the service. Yanking the app without notice doesn't just punish the company it punishes those users. Working with Uber to get the issue fixed without punishing innocent bystanders is good policy.

maxerickson7• 9 years ago

Hence my description of the move as pragmatic.

The thing you leave out is that inflicting the inconvenience on the users would have increased the chances of the users understanding what Uber had been doing.

rmc• 9 years ago

i.e. One, weaker, rule for popular apps, one stronger rule for the little people.

mahyarm2• 9 years ago

Yanking large popular apps is a two way street for a platform. They hurt themselves, possibly even more if they do it enough.

A good amount of people would stop using / buying iphones if their device stopped using facebook, uber, or some other central app in their lives. It would also disuade a bunch more customers from buying from that platform again, because they don't know what else would be yanked from them.

Platforms live and die on what they can provide, if one platform is missing a bunch of central apps, it's not going to succeed as one.

maxerickson7• 9 years ago

I didn't claim it would be beneficial to Apple to yank the apps, I said it would have been more principled than what they did.

_pmf_• 9 years ago

It'd be nice if Apple had been less pragmatic and more principled and just yanked any version of the Uber app that broke the rules.

Spine implants are hard to get, even for Tim Cook.

Steko• 9 years ago

In hindsight it's nice to think this but Apple would have been raked over the coals by the HN Walled Garden Liberation Brigade if they did that.

itsmemattchung• 9 years ago

Since "unroll.me" was anonymizing data[1] and then sold that data to Uber, is it safe to assume that Lyft used the subscription service to manage their drivers/customers contact information? If not, it's not clear to me how "unroll.me" provided that data to Uber.

[1] quote from article: Using an email digest service it owns named Unroll.me, Slice collected its customers’ emailed Lyft receipts from their inboxes and sold the anonymized data to Uber

jlgaddis• 9 years ago

Sounds like unroll.me's customers were Lyft users and unroll.me had access to their emails and/or inboxes in order to "see" the ride receipts.

rattray2• 9 years ago

Unroll.me gets access to the user's entire inbox. It just read all their email and sold it ("anonymized").

geofft7• 9 years ago

https://unroll.me/ is a service that searches your inbox to see what potentially-unwanted emails you're subscribed to, and automates the process of unsubscribing from those emails.

So they had access to the inboxes of people who happened to be Lyft customers, without any business relationship with Lyft.

From their privacy policy at https://unroll.me/legal/privacy/ :

We also collect non-personal information − data in a form that does not permit direct association with any specific individual. We may collect, use, transfer, sell, and disclose non-personal information for any purpose. For example, when you use our services, we may collect data from and about the “commercial electronic mail messages” and “transactional or relationship messages” (as such terms are defined in the CAN-SPAM Act (15 U.S.C. 7702 et. seq.) that are sent to your email accounts. We collect such commercial transactional messages so that we can better understand the behavior of the senders of such messages, and better understand our customer behavior and improve our products, services, and advertising. We may disclose, distribute, transfer, and sell such messages and the data that we collect from or in connection with such messages; provided, however, if we do disclose such messages or data, all personal information contained in such messages will be removed prior to any such disclosure.

We may collect and use your commercial transactional messages and associated data to build anonymous market research products and services with trusted business partners. If we combine non-personal information with personal information, the combined information will be treated as personal information for as long as it remains combined.

Aggregated data is considered non-personal information for the purposes of this Privacy Notice.

Apparently, if you're not paying for it, you're, yet again, the product.

cm2187• 9 years ago

One annoying thing with the Uber app is that they disabled the option to give access to location only when the app is running. The only option available in the iOS privacy setting is always or never for access to location (unlike other apps).

mikeash2• 9 years ago

I can't understand why Apple allows this.

zorbadgreek• 9 years ago

Many apps request "always" level of location tracking. Apple allows you to opt-out of location tracking for any app. Granted, this renders Uber a bit harder to use as you have to enter a pickup address, but you can still use the app.

EGreg• 9 years ago

How did they track these iPhones after the app was uninstalled?

shawn-butler2• 9 years ago

Pure speculation, but I'm guessing they were using private methods to get the IMEI.

valuearb10• 9 years ago

You used to be able to save a private key with the OS that would persist. It's no longer working now.

pdog2• 9 years ago

From the article, explained:

At the time, Uber was dealing with widespread account fraud in places like China, where tricksters bought stolen iPhones that were erased of their memory and resold. Some Uber drivers there would then create dozens of fake email addresses to sign up for new Uber rider accounts attached to each phone, and request rides from those phones, which they would then accept. Since Uber was handing out incentives to drivers to take more rides, the drivers could earn more money this way.

lithos• 9 years ago

It's an APP that has been on your phone at one point. An APP by a company that is peak (maybe valley would be better) SV when it comes to ethical standards. Uber probably has a fingerprinting system that is on par to Google/Facebook and maybe even puts them to shame (maybe paints them in a better light).

I imagine that they wouldn't really have much difficulty tracking you through ad tech, another APP, or some other Cult Of Free system that is willing to sell database access.

1024core• 9 years ago

Ah, I get it now. The author took a shortcut.

Basically, they created a unique 'fingerprint' of the iPhone. It was unique enough that even if you reinstalled the app, the fingerprint would still be the same. This was done, ostensibly, to prevent people from scamming them by reinstalling the app and coming over as new users? But they already have the phone number, so I don't understand the point.

zzalpha3• 9 years ago

Phone numbers can be trivially changed.

In the article this is in the context of fraudsters buying used phones to fake rides in China and take advantage of incentive programs to make money. So they want to track these devices as they change hands.

Kallikrates3• 9 years ago

Could be via other apps using ubers native sdk writing to a common key store. ala Google sharing auth between apps on iOS.

azinman26• 9 years ago

Such key stores are wiped on erase. They more likely used the wifi MAC address.

geofft7• 9 years ago

Near the bottom of the article:

I also interpreted "track" as "report geolocation data," but that's not what the reporter means, and honestly the reporter's meaning is more consistent with, e.g., "this website is tracking users" or "Do-Not-Track".

babesh• 9 years ago

I have heard that it is quite possible. Supposedly if you measure enough characteristics of the phone, the combination of such characteristics is enough to uniquely identify a phone. May be able to poll such information you measure with those measured by other apps.

azinman26• 9 years ago

There are quite a bit of SKUs, but not enough to make the phone unique itself. You'd ultimately need something more special to do so, such as the MAC address.

It's not clear if such code would work today on the latest iOS version but maybe. They probably used a private API to do so, and that itself was obfuscated in the compiled binary such that apples automatic analysis would fail to catch it.

refulgentis• 9 years ago

I think they're referring to Keychain items surviving an app deletion. That quietly stopped working in a recent iOS update.

stevenwoo2• 9 years ago

Was the keychain item surviving app deletion a feature that was dropped or an undocumented feature?

hboon2• 9 years ago

It was in one of the 10.3 betas but was removed. I don't think it can be deleted reliably without losing data if iCloud keychain is enabled, e.g. another device might still have the same app or share the app group.

minimaxir• 9 years ago

"to be clear, a # of companies practice 'fingerprinting,' and it is fully breaking the App Store rules. But also very clever fraud detection."

https://twitter.com/MikeIsaac/status/856180005977677825

jakelarkin• 9 years ago

wonder why Mike Issac gave that clarification immediately to his twitter-base but didn't put it in the relevant section?

could it be because the article intentionally glosses over complex details in order to pump a specific narrative ... hmm. \s

user59944612• 9 years ago

100% sure that all decent banking app use device fingerprinting. 100% sure that it is not breaking the rules and it is really important that they keep doing it.

georgiecasey• 9 years ago

instagram do it on android. they place a small file called .profig.os on external storage that is left there even if the app is deleted.

hsod3• 9 years ago

This really doesn't match up with how the conversation/outrage is playing out on Twitter right now. People seem to be interpreting this as "Uber continues to track your location after you have deleted the app," when what really happened seemed to be "If you delete Uber and then reinstall it on the same phone, Uber knows that it's the same phone."

See for example this Tweet, with hundreds of retweets and lots of verified replies:

https://twitter.com/dnvolz/status/856166875511894016

"This is like a holy trinity of privacy disaster: 1) secret tracking that 2) persists after users delete app 3) in knowing violation of rules"

pdog2• 9 years ago

"A lie will go round the world while truth is pulling its boots on."

C.H. Spurgeon, Gems from Spurgeon (1859)

tyingq4• 9 years ago

That's true, but there's a bit of live by the sword, die by the sword here. Uber is no stranger to the power of propaganda with their campaigns on the sharing economy, unions, regulations, etc.

oculusthrift2• 9 years ago

jesus. that guy is a reuters "reporter" as well. stuff like this is what encourages the concept of 'fake news'

tedivm• 9 years ago

Uber was tracking people after they left their rides, and it's unsure if they ever stopped.

http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/12/01/503...

aeturnum• 9 years ago

One of the risks of refusing to talk about services is that you're at the mercy of games of telephone. People describe what you're doing to journalists who carefully dilute anecdotes and details to obscure their exact source. Then you don't comment directly on the system because it's a secret, and here you are.

The problem for Uber is that they /are/ scummy. They proudly bend every possible rule to their advantage. It's easy to believe the worst about them.

TeMPOraL• 9 years ago

What goes around comes around. Reminds me of that time when Uber would issue throwaway credit cards and burner iPhones to people, so that they would order and cancel Lyft rides...

bogomipz2• 9 years ago

" Some Uber drivers there would then create dozens of fake email addresses to sign up for new Uber rider accounts attached to each phone, and request rides from those phones, which they would then accept. Since Uber was handing out incentives to drivers to take more rides, the drivers could earn more money this way."

Could someone explain the logic behind how a driver requesting rides benefited them? Did the drivers fake the ride and pay for it themselves? Was there a cash incentive where they were reaping enough to offset paying for the fake rides themselves and profit hanseomely? Is that correct?

hboon2• 9 years ago

Yes, in the earlier days in each city, they (just pulling numbers from thin air) do something like pay a minimum $20 for each trip if you complete 5 trips within an hour without cancellation. Helps to kickstart the driver supply.

lovich• 9 years ago

Give a reference code to your other phone. That phone now has a credit for their first uber ride or first 20 dollars, something like that. Then take the ride on your driver phone. You get paid from the second phones credit but dont spend any money yourself

mandeepj• 9 years ago

request rides from those phones, which they would then accept.

Rider and drivers are randomly assigned. I am not sure if you can choose your driver. Not sure if all these drivers in China made a huge group to benefit each other

dsacco• 9 years ago

Having looked through Uber's iOS app pretty extensively - that fingerprint methodology is easy to bypass.

_jal• 9 years ago

I've thought the guy is slimy scum for some time, but that article made something click.

One consistent feature of Kalanick's tactics appears to be a proclivity for gaslighting on an industrial scale - geofencing Apple, regulators, etc.

Among (many) other things, I would never trust any data sourced solely to anything under his control.

geofft7• 9 years ago

In American culture, gaslighting is a valued leadership quality. You get things done by making people think you're in control of the situation.

See, for instance, Mike Pence's behavior during the VP debate, saying with a straight face that certain things never happened that did happen (it's a very different experience watching it once you understand that gaslighting is a thing that exists), or Hillary Clinton talking approvingly of Abe Lincoln having a public and private position - duplicity is good leadership. If you want to get something done, and you have two constituencies that disagree about how to do it, go to each constituency and say that you agree with them. Anyone who thinks of calling you out on it is going to doubt their own recollection of events.

I think it's good for our culture that people are starting to question that, but it will be a very long and difficult battle.

maxerickson7• 9 years ago

Is talking about an achievable political goal instead of whatever you think would be ideal really the same sort of thing as gaslighting?

ars2• 9 years ago

For all the criticism he is getting, this would never have happened without him. Taxi companies are too strong, and the US needed someone like him to break barriers.

Lyft would never have existed without Uber. Now that Uber broke through the path (and is getting destroyed for it) the way is open for lots of other companies.

It happens all the time that the company that invents or creates something new, does not actually reap the rewards because the cost of creating it was so high they die in the process - but leave the way open for other companies.

whyenot2• 9 years ago

this would never have happened without him

How can you be so sure of this? The person who came up with the concept behind Uber was not Kalanick, it was Garrett Camp.

http://www.businessinsider.com/uber-travis-kalanick-bio-2014...

austenallred2• 9 years ago

The hard part of Uber wasn't the idea

atom-morgan• 9 years ago

I don't think he means the idea wouldn't have happened without him. It's his ability to disrupt an industry tightly coupled with government.

gesman• 9 years ago

This is a good perspective

specialist2• 9 years ago

The idea was in the air. Someone was going to it big. Even my buddy and I prototyped a crappy ride hailing app. When I scouted potential competitors, I found about a dozen.

Uber's innovation was financial (fleecing investors), not technical.

omarchowdhury2• 9 years ago

Seriously? Show me a ride hailing UX similar to Uber's at the time Uber launched...

NelsonMinar2• 9 years ago

Your optimism is refreshing. The only way Uber makes sense is if they get a monopoly. Uber has been trying to make sure no other company can be profitable by subsidizing rides to unsustainably low prices, in the hope they are the last company standing.

yawaworht122• 9 years ago

All the companies subsidize rides, including Lyft and Didi. No company would willingly do it if the others didn't do it as well, except maybe to increase market liquidity as the market maker.

Why single out Uber when all the companies in this space are doing the exact same?

tedmiston8• 9 years ago

Lyft would never have existed without Uber. Now that Uber broke through the path (and is getting destroyed for it) the way is open for lots of other companies.

Lyft rolled out in many cities before Uber. It certainly can / did exist without Uber's aggressive approach in several cities.

dajohnson892• 9 years ago

But the business model was proven by Uber.

ktta2• 9 years ago

That's something that interests me about CEOs who constantly face criticism. It was always CEOs like Kalanick who bring difficult but much needed change because they are brave (yes, I said it) enough to make some decisions.

It's always easy to point out the things they did and criticize them, but it is harder to realize the work that they put in and the choices they make to keep their company (and most of the time, the industry they're in prosper). If he would've played by all the rules, Uber would've had to put up a Goodbye page on their homepage a while ago. Taxi industry would've tried to decimate it, and what ever would've happened, wouldn't be good for the transportation ecosystem as a whole. Self driving taxis are even being talked about because of Uber. I think Uber moved the arrival of self driving taxis from the concept to the street a decade earlier (although I have to say it might've taken longer if Levandowski was never at Uber; lets wait for the outcome of the lawsuit)

Makes me think of Steve Jobs in the same way. Steve Jobs was (and still is in parts of the internet) intensely hated for his contributions. But he made a change in the computing industry which made computers (electronics in general) much more beautiful and a pleasure to use. Bringing about that kind of change is very difficult in my opinion, and we need brazen people like Jobs and Kalanick. They are sometimes immoral with their choices, but people tend to forget the world we live in often is too.

pfortuny• 9 years ago

As always with corporate "justice", if you are big enough and transgress, you simply get a slap. If you are a tiny developer, your app is out of the store and may be at some point you may get it back.

Truly blind justice.

macspoofing5• 9 years ago

I think a case should be made for pragmatism. Informing an app maker they are breaking rules when their app is installed on hundreds of millions of devices is the right move ... for your customers.

KKKKkkkk1• 9 years ago

Had Travis Kalanick been driven to win at whatever cost, he would have made sure there is no sexual harassment at his company.

valuearb10• 9 years ago

And he would have given everyone a unicorn.

gourou• 9 years ago

Uber considered Lyft and McDonald’s its main competition for attracting new drivers.

can somebody explain this?

austenallred2• 9 years ago

If you have low income and need a job now there are three easy options. Uber, Lyft, and McDonalds.

daxelrod2• 9 years ago

Uber is a low-wage job that is extremely easy to get (no interview required) and has very few skills as a prerequisite.

McDonalds fits those criteria as well.

odonnellryan6• 9 years ago

Not incredibly easy to get, you do need a pretty-nice car. I make okay money and my car would not suffice.

celim307• 9 years ago

Anyone uncomfortable with these kind of profiles? I'd rather judge his business decisions in isolation rather than having this quasi psycho analysis where it's implied we can get better insight of his business by knowing he was bullied

rafe333• 9 years ago

Yes. And why didn't he explain how he turned the table on his high school bullies. Odd to include that psycho analysis and then leave out any details there.

zilchers• 9 years ago

I'm off uber after a BS "5 minute" issue. I've been using it for years, they literally had to burn so much goodwill to get me to stop using them, it's almost impressive.

rafe333• 9 years ago

Further proof it's a pure commodity service and customer satisfaction is the most important metric for them to measure.

odonnellryan6• 9 years ago

You're talking about them tracking you for up to five minutes after they drop you off, right?

I've also left Uber for Lyft.

neom• 9 years ago

Ditto and I'd done a lot of rides; https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1804713823185446&set...

ensiferum• 9 years ago

What a shitty world it is that allows total sociopathic ass holes like Mr.Kalanick to raise to the top and become successful.

AndrewKemendo• 9 years ago

It's been this way literally forever.

blackmarker2• 9 years ago

"At a meeting at Mr. Kalanick’s house, and over cartons of Chinese food, he and Mr. Michael hosted Lyft’s president, John Zimmer, who asked for 15 percent of Uber in exchange for selling Lyft. Over the next hour, Mr. Kalanick and Mr. Michael repeatedly laughed at Mr. Zimmer’s audacious request."

Did they laugh at him to his face, cause if it was just the two of them...

atonse• 9 years ago

I hope the Lyft guys are laughing for hours at the self inflicted PR disaster that Uber has earned now.

plg2• 9 years ago

"Using an email digest service it owns named Unroll.me, Slice collected its customers’ emailed Lyft receipts from their inboxes and sold the anonymized data to Uber. "

Can someone explain to me the mechanics of how this happens? I use Lyft, which emails me a receipt. How does Slice get a hold of this? Does Lyft sell it to Slice?

tyingq4• 9 years ago

It's pretty sleazy.

See https://unroll.me

It purports to be a convenient tool for end users. But sells them out for revenue.

Edit: I'm sure it's in the terms somewhere. But to me, something this intrusive should be stated up front if it's not obvious.

plg2• 9 years ago

Pretty sleazy indeed.

Honest question (not trolling, I swear), is Gmail any different? I guess (I'm guessing though?) google doesn't sell users' info to third parties? (But I guess it does use the info within alphabet companies??) Does anyone know this for sure?

specializeded• 9 years ago

(From unroll.me's copy on their front page)

Instantly see a list of all your subscription emails. Unsubscribe easily from whatever you don’t want.

Unroll.Me is a free service

So they analyse an inbox, and siphon the data in the process.

ksherlock• 9 years ago

"Unroll.Me is a free service". Looks like people forward their email to unroll.me which creates a digest version of all your Facebook notifications or something.

tedmiston8• 9 years ago

People that use Unroll.me grant it access to their Gmail account for its newsletter bundling feature. However Gmail permissions aren't fine-grained about only allowing them access to certain senders so Unroll.me has access to all email. While they are in your email, they sneakingly check everything in your inbox, even senders that you have not rolled up, and share "anonymized" data. This is my hunch of what they're doing given the input / output they have, but none of us can really know exactly without seeing the code. They're also tweeting a lot today trying to convince people that they scan one's inbox in good conscious.

ErikAugust• 9 years ago

Buried lede here:

"They spent much of their energy one-upping rivals like Lyft. Uber devoted teams to so-called competitive intelligence, purchasing data from an analytics service called Slice Intelligence. Using an email digest service it owns named Unroll.me, Slice collected its customers’ emailed Lyft receipts from their inboxes and sold the anonymized data to Uber. Uber used the data as a proxy for the health of Lyft’s business. (Lyft, too, operates a competitive intelligence team.)"

blackmarker2• 9 years ago

Every company with large resources does this. NYT gains more clicks and views with this angle.

cocktailpeanuts7• 9 years ago

Wow I think this unroll.me thing is the real scandal here.

I am an unroll.me user, but had no idea they sell user data to companies this way.

Their whole value proposition is to help people control their own privacy and now I kind of feel betrayed..

mee_too2• 9 years ago

Hahaha, welcome to the future ...

rosser2• 9 years ago

From their own site: "Unroll.Me is a free service", emphasis added.

If it's free for you, you're the product.

ovi2562• 9 years ago

I'm sure it's buried somewhere in the Terms of Use. Contemporary terms of use are a classic dark pattern. If one would like to setup an useful ML project, take as input Terms of Use, spit out the highlights, the buried ledes, such as user data being sold.

bigbento2• 9 years ago

I was a little creeped out when--long after I deauthorized the app and enabled 2FA on my Gmail account--I got an email from them saying "We've found 141 new subscriptions". I wonder if that was just marketing spam, or if they have a weird way of accessing my email still.

ninetax• 9 years ago

Me too. I'm pissed.

gonzo• 9 years ago

"kind of"?

gdulli8• 9 years ago

Wow I think this unroll.me thing is the real scandal here.

How is it a scandal? Competitive intel is a normal and widespread thing and it's not a scandal that people don't read a privacy policy that says, "We may collect, use, transfer, sell, and disclose non-personal information for any purpose."

the_watcher• 9 years ago

Their whole value proposition is to help people control their own privacy and now I kind of feel betrayed..

Really? I never got that. While I'm also a little unsettled by the selling data part, the value prop was always pretty clearly simplifying unsubscribing en masse, which necessarily involved handing over access to the contents of your emails.

snikolic• 9 years ago

Slice (unroll.me) is owned by Rakuten, who also owns a whole family of companies including Ebates, Rakuten Marketing (a fairly large adtech company), Viber, Buy.com, and lots of others. Slice's data has all sorts of interesting applications, both within the Rakuten family and to third parties like Uber. If you're a Slice/unroll.me user, I'd bet that a lot of your online experience is shaped by the data you share with Slice. A lot of Rakuten's other properties actually share office space with Slice in San Mateo, so there's obviously plenty of opportunity for collaboration. :-)

The irony is that Rakuten also owns a significant (12 percent?) stake in Lyft. Pretty funny that one Rakuten property was selling data to Uber who used it to hurt a second Rakuten property.

karlkatzke6• 9 years ago

I worked for a company that nearly acquired unroll.me. At the time, which was over three years ago, they had kept a copy of every single email of yours that you sent or received while a part of their service. Those emails were kept in a series of poorly secured S3 buckets. A large part of Slice buying unroll.me was for access to those email archives. Specifically, they wanted to look for keyword trends and for receipts from online purchases.

The founders of unroll.me were pretty dishonest, which is a large part of why the company I worked for declined to purchase the company. As an example, one of the problems was how the founders had valued and then diluted equity shares that employees held. To make a long story short, there weren't any circumstances in which employees who held options or an equity stake would see any money.

I hope you weren't emailed any legal documents or passwords written in the clear.

taude3• 9 years ago

I agree, the unenroll.me is a whole other story here that should be dug into deeper

thatdrew• 9 years ago

here's the CEOapology http://blog.unroll.me/we-can-do-better/

InclinedPlane• 9 years ago

Did you pay money for unroll.me? Did you read the entirety of the TOU/EULA? How can you be so naive? If you're not the customer you're the product.

rattray2• 9 years ago

Here's the link to revoke perms: https://myaccount.google.com/permissions

I just disconnected from one or two services which had access to my gmail (reasonably so).

S3curityPlu5• 9 years ago

Yes thanks I just deactivated unroll.me and deleted my account, make sure you change your email password and deny them access from your email provider as well.

grushabh• 9 years ago

Seems to be a recurring theme for services that scrape your email inbox. For example, see https://context.io which is a popular service for building these kinds of apps. They clearly state that the free version is funded by collecting anonymized data from the end users' email inboxes.

Just another reminder that nothing is free =)

gnuarch• 9 years ago

What do you guys think of Mixmax? Heard of people liking their service for making appointments within Gmail, and e.g. receiving read receipts. From their privacy policy:

[...] Mixmax may securely access or store your name, your Gmail email address, your Gmail emails and other conversations, and your Gmail contact list [...] We may anonymize your Personal Information so that you are not individually identified, and provide that information to our partners.

https://mixmax.com/privacy.html https://mixpanel.com/privacy/

devy• 9 years ago

This is why I didn't and never will trust 3rd parties products/services getting accessed to my inbox and reading my emails wholesale in order to mine data or provide value.

Paribus is another of such services that I am aware that require you open your inbox access to them (the pull model).

There is nothing wrong with reading your emails with your explicit consent but I believe a push model like TripIt/Kayak's previous push model (send email receipts to trips@tripit/kayak.com) is a safer way to avoid privacy being violated and abused.

benwikler• 9 years ago

BTW: unroll.me's parent company Slice has the exact same business model.

adg• 9 years ago

This jumped out at me, too. Here's how Unroll.me describes their service:

  Clean up your inbox
  Instantly see a list of all your subscription emails. 
  Unsubscribe easily from whatever you don’t want.

It's not clear at all that they are reading people's emails and selling the data.

ovi2562• 9 years ago

What you read on the public site is the USP for the users that install the unroll.me app. They are not the economic buyers, the ones who pay for the service. Those are the people that buy the user's aggregate data. They get in-person pitches on confidential slides, because if their USP leaked to the public, nobody would install and use the app.

1dundundun• 9 years ago

Noticed this as well...

rhizome3• 9 years ago

It's not clear at all that they are reading people's emails and selling the data

They don't think it's any of the customer's business to know that, and it's counter to the company's interests to publicize it.

mathattack• 9 years ago

If they sell your receipt data to Uber, who else might they sell it to? An insurance company? A hedge fund? Your bank?

savanaly• 9 years ago

anonymized

It would be much bigger news if they were selling data that could be used against the consumers on an individual basis.

gdulli8• 9 years ago

They would never know who "your" bank is. Reading a few paragraphs near the top of the privacy policy could have cleared up the initial misunderstanding about the nature of the service and also any FUD about how the data is used.

irfansharif• 9 years ago

I had revoked unroll.me permissions right after via google connected apps & sites, amusing that in order to delete your unroll.me account[1] you'd have to give them the very same permissions again.

[1] https://unrollme.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/200165526-How...

chinathrow3• 9 years ago

A friend recommended unroll.me once. I carefully read their ToS and it was clear that they get full read access to your whole Gmail-Inbox.

Now we know what they are doing it and how. I hope they get shutdown within the aftermath of this story.

gdulli8• 9 years ago

Why on earth would a service get shut down for allowing consenting adults to opt into an agreement that allows anonymized data to be shared in a compliant way?

hackuser2• 9 years ago

lede

It may be of interest to you, but it isn't the lede of the story. The lede is a pattern of behavior by the CEO, of which that is one element.

gsteinb88• 9 years ago

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bury_the_lede

OP is implying the "real story" (i.e. the most important part of the article) is not what the article begins with

amitagarwal• 9 years ago

Here's an open source Google Script that lets you easily unsubscribe from bulk emails in Gmail. Source on Github. https://www.labnol.org/internet/gmail-unsubscribe/28806/

noamhacker• 9 years ago

A couple years ago, I almost signed up for unroll.me but I stopped myself. It didn't seem worth it to give some service full access to my gmail account, when I could just spend a few minutes unsubscribing manually.

vogt• 9 years ago

https://www.slice.com/ This Slice?

That headline "Your inbox security is our top priority" sure seems hilarious now. Also, I wonder why the article refers to it as Slice Intelligence? Is that their official company name on the paperwork? Is it to portray this shadowy intelligence gathering agency for hire? Both?

ranman• 9 years ago

From: Me To: support@slice.com

Please delete my account and all my data.

jamonholmgren• 9 years ago

I used to recommend unroll.me to people but eventually found that relentlessly unsubscribing from things worked better anyway. I assumed they were making money from ads, but should have known better.

I have a few simple rules I follow to hit inbox zero...works quite well:

1. Unsubscribe Relentlessly 2. Use Keyboard Shortcuts or Gestures 3. Snooze Important Emails 4. Use a To-Do App

(I wrote it up in more detail here: https://shift.infinite.red/how-i-achieve-inbox-zero-every-da...)

bmpafa2• 9 years ago

If anyone is looking to kick unroll.me, but still has a problem w/ massive subscription piles, I wrote a quick tutorial on Medium about how to unsub from everything at once w/ their product (so you can delete it once & for all):

https://goo.gl/B4HLPX

cocktailpeanuts7• 9 years ago

Genuinely curious, can anyone tell me how this is different from Branch metrics? https://branch.io/

Tons of apps use their platform to identify unique devices, and I'm curious what makes it legal and what makes it not.

tedmiston8• 9 years ago

It looks like Branch uses an ensemble of techniques for matching, but one (perhaps the main) is just a browser cookie, so it happens outside of a third party native app. Based on the recent notes on that page, it sounds like Apple isn't too fond of their approach.

https://dev.branch.io/getting-started/matching-accuracy/over...

poirier• 9 years ago

Open source gmail script: https://www.labnol.org/internet/gmail-unsubscribe/28806/

Not by me. No affiliation. Found it after this news.

[edit: typo]

shimon_e2• 9 years ago

After reading the entire article everyone but one person declined comment. That person remained unnamed.

stevebmark• 9 years ago

Is there a possibility of a class action lawsuit against Apple for this? They knowingly let Uber track customers after the app was removed. Isn't any user who deleted the app during that time allowed damages?

valuearb10• 9 years ago

First, when Apple found out they made Uber stop and they eliminated the API hole that was used.

Maybe you meant they knowingly allowed Uber to do on iOS what any app can commonly do on Android? Apple works very hard to protect users privacy, it doesn't guarantee it. Android doesn't guarantee it either, and doesn't try very hard to protect it.

idlewords2• 9 years ago

The buried lede here is that Apple did nothing to protect users from a company that openly and willfully strip-mined their privacy in violation of App Store rules.

valuearb10• 9 years ago

I guess you didn't understand the buried lede then. Apple forced them to stop. The offense was extremely minor and didn't hurt anyones privacy (unless you view iPhones as persons).

idlewords2• 9 years ago

Apple caught them taking active countermeasures to hide their activity from Apple engineers. They caught Uber doing one thing; the question they should have asked is, what else is Uber doing that they still get away with?

mightykan• 9 years ago

Getting device serial numbers through private APIs and transferring this information to their servers isn’t “extremely minor.” Any other lesser-known developer would’ve been rejected if not outright banned. Apple has something to answer here. Why is Uber still allowed in? How many offenses are companies allowed?

akyu• 9 years ago

Mr. Kalanick, with salt-and-pepper hair, a fast-paced walk and an iPhone practically embedded in his hand, is described by friends as more at ease with data and numbers (some consider him a math savant) than with people.

I chuckled a little bit reading this.

throwaway23693• 9 years ago

Although the article says they stopped using fingerprinting after getting caught by Apple, that's not actually the case. They're still doing it. I have an iphone that no matter how many times you wipe it, or how many sim cards you use, it will get instantly banned if you try and create an account on Uber.

ijafri2• 9 years ago

I don't know but Uber has proven to be a shinny example of a ponzy scheme within a larger ponzy scheme. They will never be profitable, Burning billions, so is the case with Careem whom I met, and their staff was at loss to tell how this is a viable business to run. They disrupted taxi drivers, making good earnings. They benefited a lot to consumers eliminating overcharging by common taxi drivers. But as an entrepreneur I am still failing to understand how far they can go before they run out of fuel $ eventually.

valuearb10• 9 years ago

Hard to imagine how they won't be profitable. The cost of providing the service is pennies and they get dollars per transaction.

AlexandrB• 9 years ago

But then shouldn't they be profitable already? How are they losing multiple billions per year if they're profitable per unit.

If the answer is they need to raise prices and/or reduce the drivers' cut, how will they be better than the taxi services they're replacing? Many taxi services up here in Canada already have apps that are close to on par with what Uber offers.

ijafri2• 9 years ago

i don't know how did you reach the conclusion of costs amounting to 'pennies', they are a taxi service without owning or leasing a taxi (generally) and without investing into depreciating assets, does not make the costs 'pennies' even worse, their one time investment might not be higher but monthly operational and running expenses are far more therefore, who hires taxi drivers, and it's almost costing them more than they pay to taxi 'partners' and all other costs involved, hence the massive losses, have you got a car? go to their office, and 'recruit' yourself and do the math.

pssst!! it's not a 'angelic ride sharing' service period. it's hiring taxi drivers and in this case mostly entrepreneurial taxi drivers having multiple cars and running it as a business.

late2part3• 9 years ago

And yet, they're losing billions. Those Cassandra servers don't run themselves...

nomnombunty• 9 years ago

Why are there so many Uber article on HN? The more I know the more upset I am with them.

I also find the fact that their new logo looks like an asshole very fitting

qwert-e• 9 years ago

It's gotten a lot of media attention and is an interesting (if not entirely fair) barometer of unicorn startup culture and industry.

0xmohit• 9 years ago

Uber responds to report that it tracked users who deleted its app [0]. It seems to insist that tracking was done to prevent fraud and account compromise.

  Uber is pushing back on the allegations, saying that the
  tracking is a common industry practice used to prevent fraud
  and account compromise.

[0] https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/23/uber-responds-to-report-th...

bkohlmann• 9 years ago

The embedded Lyft ads (knowing full well they are adaptive to a given reader) throughout the article is a brilliant touch on the part of Uber's main competitor.

shawn-butler2• 9 years ago

Is there a good tool to create these line art "sketch" renditions like that of Kalanick in this article?

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/04/19/technology/24trav...

breeze_em_out• 9 years ago

Disgraceful hitpiece from a trash publication.

Keep truckin, Travis.

MilnerRoute• 9 years ago

If you've already used your "10 free articles" for the month, the complete text of the article is also available at CNBC.

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/23/new-york-times-digital-uberas...

quantum_state2• 9 years ago

Uber's behavior is so against the time .. it will fall in ruin ..

quantum_state2• 9 years ago

Uber will fall in ruin .. people may already shorting it now ..

dbg31415• 9 years ago

Random Question: Why doesn't Apple do clean uninstalls once you remove an app? Every time I re-add Uber (I usually delete it since I live in Austin and it's useless... but then when I travel I re-add it when I want a ride) it already has my account and password saved. I'd be a lot happier if it did a clean install.

Not just Uber, but every app... any idea how I can do a true clean uninstall when I remove an app from my iPhone?

tim3334• 9 years ago

Try Settings > General > Profile > Delete Profile?

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT205347

awqrre• 9 years ago

I hope Uber burns to the ground, the sooner the better. So far they get away with so much, I can't believe it... Maybe Uber's only problem is that its CEO is not as good as others at avoiding the press.

late2part3• 9 years ago

Serious question. How can I short this $70B stock?

tim3334• 9 years ago

Sadly there doesn't seem any way to short it on an organised stock or spread betting market. The best you could probably do would be a private bet or forward contract if you can find someone who wants to be long.

nilkn3• 9 years ago

Slightly off topic, but does anyone know if the following image depicts programmer working conditions at Uber?

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/04/22/business/24travis...

If so, I don't see how anyone can get any serious work done there.

throwaway_uber• 9 years ago

Yes and no. There are multiple offices in the Bay Area including three in engineering offices in San Francisco. Most offices/floors have a lot more space and good working conditions. However where that photo was taken, conditions are probably the tightest of all because it's the headquarters location on one of the two main floors. These two floors are where engineers need the greatest contact with other non-technical teams. It goes through periods of being cramped due to business growth and as the company acquires more office space, conditions get better again. This is not uncommon at any company in San Francisco when you've grown headcount and are waiting for more office space to decompress. I've seen similar conditions when visiting friends at other companies experiencing high growth.

I work on one of these two floors, and have worked at all three SF engineering offices on three different teams since joining 3 years ago. I would say those are not typical conditions for most engineering teams, but are more common if you work on a team that needs to be close to the non-technical areas in the company.

That all said, you can work wherever you want. Sometimes I work at my desk with headphones and sometimes I find a quiet place on that floor or one of the other floors. There are no lack of quiet spaces. It's also easy to work from home one to two days a week if you want. My team has our own no meetings day and some team members work from home that day (but typically do so to save themselves the commute).

I won't go into any details on what I work to maintain my anonymity but I have no problem getting serious work done and I work on one of the largest scale and most critical pieces of infrastructure.

amingilani• 9 years ago

Big story and all but they could have come up with a more descriptive title.

For a moment I wondered why Travis Kalanick playing with matches was on the front page.

beedogs2• 9 years ago

Uber won't exist in five years. Thank God.

dartwing• 9 years ago

"some consider him a math savant"

"Savant" is very specific term. "Some" is very unusual reference to describe sources for good journalism.

Uber CEO Plays with Fire

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