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Uber CEO Plays with Fire

nytimes.com

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Re: Uber CEO Plays with Fire

#181

Post by bigbento »

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #152
ErikAugust wrote: post #138

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…

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..

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.

Re: Uber CEO Plays with Fire

#182

Post by ninetax »

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #152
ErikAugust wrote: post #138

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…

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..

Me too. I'm pissed.

Re: Uber CEO Plays with Fire

#183

Post by mee_too »

specialist wrote: post #130
cmahler7 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The drivers also subsidize the cheap(er) fares.

How many Uber drivers have you spoken to?

Kalanick's moral compass may or may not be aligned, but the service his company offers is awesome.

Re: Uber CEO Plays with Fire

#184

Post by georgiecasey »

minimaxir wrote: post #55
pdog wrote: post #36

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…

> "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

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.

Re: Uber CEO Plays with Fire

#185

Post by gonzo »

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #152
ErikAugust wrote: post #138

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…

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..

"kind of"?

Re: Uber CEO Plays with Fire

#187

Post by ForHackernews »

ovi256 wrote: post #180
cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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..

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.

Wasn't there a project similar to that featured on here at one point? I don't think it used sophisticated machine learning or anything, but it used basic keyword search to produce "plain English" summaries of ToS. I remember it being somebody's hobby project; I can't seem to find it now.

Re: Uber CEO Plays with Fire

#188

Post by throwaway32342 »

Am only I able to read the word IPO between the lines in this and most of the other recent news articles about Uber?

It seems plausible that some might try to artificially dump the upcoming IPO price to buy the stocks cheaper than they actually worth by creating outrage against the company and CEO in news.

Re: Uber CEO Plays with Fire

#189

Post by santaclaus »

rhino369 wrote: post #74
taude wrote: post #18

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 bette…

>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. B…

> 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.

Re: Uber CEO Plays with Fire

#190

Post by harryh »

maxerickson wrote: post #24

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.

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.
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