Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Uber employees used the platform to stalk celebrities and their exes

businessinsider.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 250 posts

Re: Uber employees used the platform to stalk celebrities and their exes

#71

Post by onion2k »

michaelvoz wrote: post #47
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #18

Don't forget that Uber now requires you allow them to access your location, even when you aren't using their app [1]. Side note: consider the value to foreign (or domestic) intelligence agencies of this weakly-guarded pot of gold. [1] http://www.theverge.com/2016/11/30/13763714/uber-location-da...

Disclaimer: I work for Uber. However, my opinions are mine. I am also not defending nor attacking in any way Uber gathering location data. With that out of the way - you know your cell phone carrier already has this data right? They have way better data than Uber ever will about all your habits, including establishing relationships based on who you call, which sites you visit, who you are signed up on a plan with, et…

I'll agree with your point as soon as Uber signs up to the same level of regulatory restrictions as every phone carrier enjoys. The fact is that there are laws that strictly prohibit my phone carrier doing certain things with data about my usage. Case in point, the stalking that the article mentions - I don't think employees of my phone carrier can do the same thing. Technically they could because they have the necessary data, but they don't because regulations have been put in place to stop them.

Uber has demonstrated that they can't be trusted with personal data, so I'm quite sure the government will be considering implementing some regulation in their industry too. That's a shame really, because I'm sure most of us would prefer companies weren't restricted by regulation and were just sensible and ethical by default, so laws weren't necessary.

Re: Uber employees used the platform to stalk celebrities and their exes

#72

Post by benevol »

michaelvoz wrote: post #47
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #18

Don't forget that Uber now requires you allow them to access your location, even when you aren't using their app [1]. Side note: consider the value to foreign (or domestic) intelligence agencies of this weakly-guarded pot of gold. [1] http://www.theverge.com/2016/11/30/13763714/uber-location-da...

Disclaimer: I work for Uber. However, my opinions are mine. I am also not defending nor attacking in any way Uber gathering location data. With that out of the way - you know your cell phone carrier already has this data right? They have way better data than Uber ever will about all your habits, including establishing relationships based on who you call, which sites you visit, who you are signed up on a plan with, et…

> you know your cell phone carrier already has this data right?

"But we already do A, so why shouldn't we do B?"

"But we already do B, so why shouldn't we do C?"

"But we already do C, so why shouldn't we do D?"

...

"But we already do Y, so why shouldn't we do Z?"

This is generally how things slowly but surely go down the toilet. From climate change to mass surveillance to fascism, etc.

Re: Uber employees used the platform to stalk celebrities and their exes

#73

Post by Hilyin »

mwfj wrote: post #3

This seems like a good place to tell Uber users that the only way of removing your credit card details from your Uber account is to either: a) plead with Uber's customer service to do so or b) add another payment method (like another credit card) This, of course, is horribly bad practice. I can only imagine that they arrived at this very peculiar arrangement after extensive A/B testing - Uber has hired plenty of FB f…

try changing your card's expiration date to an expired date, this has worked for me in other situations like this

Re: Uber employees used the platform to stalk celebrities and their exes

#74

Post by johansch »

Hilyin wrote: post #73
mwfj wrote: post #3

This seems like a good place to tell Uber users that the only way of removing your credit card details from your Uber account is to either: a) plead with Uber's customer service to do so or b) add another payment method (like another credit card) This, of course, is horribly bad practice. I can only imagine that they arrived at this very peculiar arrangement after extensive A/B testing - Uber has hired plenty of FB f…

try changing your card's expiration date to an expired date, this has worked for me in other situations like this

Trying to do that: "An error occurred trying to fulfill your request".

Re: Uber employees used the platform to stalk celebrities and their exes

#75

Post by dang »

droopyEyelids wrote: post #29

Can we make the rule that it's not OK to post negative stories about YCombinator companies on this site? There are a million places to talk negative about everyhing. Here, we're trying to build things. We know no one is perfect. Lets make this place a bastion of positivity instead of negativity.

That's not gonna happen on HN, nor would we want it to. For one thing, there are different kinds of negativity; for another, suppressing the negative is no reliable path to the positive; for a third, the community wouldn't trust us if we ran this place that way.

Uber isn't a YC company.

Re: Uber employees used the platform to stalk celebrities and their exes

#77

Post by kelnos »

employee8000 wrote: post #46
droopyEyelids wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if you're being serious or you're trying to damn them with faint praise by mentioning they changed their MOTD as a 'security measure' If you want to defend uber, it's pretty easy, just say there you know people that work on the team that audits the logs of employee access to personal data every quarter, and if those logs aren't justified by a ticket people get fired.

I have no idea what you're talking about, I'm just telling the truth. I don't access customer information, and I don't know anyone who audits the logs so I can't comment on those. I also don't know what other processes are in place, I'm sure there are others, but I've just never had to deal with it so I don't know. But I trust that Uber takes the security of their customers information very very seriously. The image…

The truth, at least the part of it that you can see for yourself. You freely admit that you don't know if there even are actually audit logs, or if the measures in place are simply big warnings (that have no teeth behind them). Even if there are audit logs, they're useless if there's no system in place that flags suspicious use for a human to check up on... or lacking that, someone whose job it is to regularly read through the audit logs and verify that each access of personal info is legit. You seem like an ethical person, so you're unlikely to find out if there are consequences to looking at customer data without good reason, so you don't know what -- if anything -- is triggered if you click on something sensitive.

I know you want to believe that what you're saying is true, but it sounds like you have no hard evidence to back that up to yourself, let alone evidence you can present to someone outside such as the HN readers reading this thread.

You may trust that Uber takes the security of customer info seriously, but from the outside we have no frame of reference, except for reports of past wrong-doing. A statement to the effect of "it was bad in the past but it's better now" unfortunately isn't all that reassuring, and I hope you can see it from our side of the fence and understand why.

Re: Uber employees used the platform to stalk celebrities and their exes

#78

Post by bbcbasic »

droopyEyelids wrote: post #29

Can we make the rule that it's not OK to post negative stories about YCombinator companies on this site? There are a million places to talk negative about everyhing. Here, we're trying to build things. We know no one is perfect. Lets make this place a bastion of positivity instead of negativity.

So like a 'yes men' site? If that were in place, I'd have to say, I think your idea is very awesome.

Re: Uber employees used the platform to stalk celebrities and their exes

#79

Post by username223 »

michaelvoz wrote: post #49
employee8000 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I'm not naive, and I, proudly, stand behind everything I wrote. The person in the article was terminated before I joined, so I don't know what the systems were like back then, but every time I access production systems, I have a ton of messages telling me that our access is being completely tracked and we are prohibited from doing anything that was mentioned in the article. I haven't actually tested to see what I…

Uber employee here too. Would never ever check any data of anyone not related to debugging crashes, race conditions, unexpected app behavior etc etc, its just not worth losing my job. Despite the bad press it is actually a pretty freaking great place to work. Also wanna +1 the warnings about data access and only looking at PII for legitimate purposes are all over the place.

> Despite the bad press it is actually a pretty freaking great place to work.

So, how many hours a week do you drive? Oh, I'm sorry... those aren't "workers" -- they're just being nice and sharing their cars in their free time.

Post reply on HN