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

181–190 of 250 posts

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

#181

Post by zeven7 »

cm2187 wrote: post #164
brianwawok wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In theory they would make sure it was an account you used before the theft.

Yeah but letting services expire with the credit card unless you still use them is not a bad way to get rid of all the services you subscribed thinking it could be useful but never used. Reminds me of what was done in the military (I think it was in a European country). Officers were spending their time writing reports that were never read. They introduced a policy under which for a given time everyone should stop wr…

Hmm, I feel like in my job I write a lot of things that no one ever reads (issue notes, extra commit information, comments) with the expectation that it'll be helpful information if I or someone else ever does need to look to figure out why I did something.

And it has been helpful. I mean maybe about 1% of it is read later at some point and helps clarify a situation. 99% of it is never seen again. That 1% of the time it's really helpful to have it.

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

#182

Post by ksherlock »

employee8000 wrote: post #28
EugeneOZ wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This quote from another employee also looks naive now (and I'm not trying to offend him): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13086454

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…

Do Uber employees use that to stalk other Uber employees?

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

#183

Post by Avshalom »

res0nat0r wrote: post #86
kelnos wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

> 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. You are calling the OP out for not having hard evidence, yet you ar…

With out specific evidence nothing E8K says actually contradicts the article.

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

#184

Post by [deleted] »

milesdyson_phd wrote: post #37
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.

HN is already an echo chamber most of the time, let's not start censoring what content shows up just because it badmouths a YC company

[deleted]

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

#186

Post by DanBC »

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.

There is already a rule about avoiding gratuitous negativity.

This rule means you can criticise, fiercely and vigorously, any company or product, so long as you're attempting to be civil and constructive.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9317916

> Critical thinking is good; shallow cynicism, on the other hand, adds nothing of value to the community. It is unpleasant to read and detracts from actual work. If you have something important but negative to say, that’s fine, but say it in a respectful way.

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

#187

Post by georgespencer »

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...

> Uber now requires you allow

Doesn't seem to for me. If I disable it in settings, it prompts me to enter an address and suggests that I re-enable the setting.

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

#188

Post by dx034 »

KuhlMensch wrote: post #88

> Uber would not give more details on its technical controls. In practice, the security sources said, Uber’s policy basically relies on the honor system. Employees must agree not to abuse their access. But the company doesn’t actually prevent employees from getting and misusing the private information in the first place, the security sources said. If true, that is fantastically ludicrous. It seems I wasn't paying att…

It's exactly what an employee writes in another comment here:

> 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.

There is probably a small department doing random checks on data access. But with several thousand people (including support staff) accessing data, the chance of being noticed is extremely low.

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

#189

Post by coldtea »

aianus wrote: post #177
coldtea wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, you occasionally drive Uber as an experiment/hobby, not as a job, which is not the same experience as relying on it for your next meal.

Relying on Uber for your livelihood is really dumb. It's a part-time hobby job. (I drive for Uber part-time).

If you can't get other work where you are, it's an option.

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

#190

Post by fencepost »

ibejoeb wrote: post #93
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…

I was recently unsettled when I installed Lyft on a new phone after a pretty long lapse. Sure enough, with no verification of any kind, my credit card information was still there. Apparently it is keyed to the phone number. Insane.

Phone number or Google / iCloud account? Pretty sure Lyft wants identification permission.
Post reply on HN