I feel like uber, google and facebook have competition who steal and violate peoples privacy the most..
Please, do not use these corporations services.
Uber Paid Hackers to Delete Stolen Data on 57M People
301–310 of 606 posts
Re: Uber Paid Hackers to Delete Stolen Data on 57M People
#302I thought it was illegal to conceal breaches. Certainly there should be disclosure requirements for publicly traded companies.
Re: Uber Paid Hackers to Delete Stolen Data on 57M People
#303Earlier quoted context omitted.
Speaking of politics, media influence and tech, a fair number of average joes have a terrible opinion of Musk/Tesla/SpaceX; but these same people are unaware, or maybe vaguely aware the US Gov spent >10billion, just in direct financial losses, bailing out GM. If everyone in the country was told "write a check to GM for $50 or go to jail," and conservative media wasn't berating Tesla/Musk, public opinion would be a lo…
Is conservative media berating Musk? I thought progressive media was souring on him?
I think it's more the "anti-fact" wing of the media (which does mostly overlap "conservative" on the Venn diagram). Unabashed alt-right agitprop outlets like Breitbart news, for instance, or climate change deniers.
There are a couple different things at play.
First, one plank in their infowar strategy is to combat anything that even indirectly propagates any understanding of climate change among the proles. They take positions even against more-efficient-than-incandescent light bulbs, so this line of attack certainly includes targeting electric cars and solar. Musk is obviously a celebrity of sorts in these areas. Any government help to build solar plants or subsidize non-fossil-fuel alternatives (e.g. electric vehicles) is portrayed as deeply corrupt, a betrayal of American values and working families, etc. Ergo, Musk is bad.
Two, Elon Musk and John McCain have a strong association. Musk has supported McCain and in turn McCain has supported Musk and his business ventures. This is the kind of invest-in-politicians-who-can-help-you relationship that is pretty much a fundamental building block of how the American government works, but it always looks bad to somebody inclined to see it that way. (It's probably also objectively bad that this is how the system works, but anyway it is.) So I think a lot of conservative media that doesn't like McCain (because he is too "establishment" or whatever the reason) have repeatedly brought Musk into it, implying corruption on the part of McCain to help Musk use Russian rocket engines at SpaceX, for example. McCain is bad, ergo his sleazy buddy Musk is also bad.
Re: Uber Paid Hackers to Delete Stolen Data on 57M People
#304Earlier quoted context omitted.
Uber is like the Donald Trump of corporations. It sets new ground in how openly vile you can be without any consequences. Just like Donald Trump the real danger is not in Uber itself but in whatever it will be that uses it as a role model.
I'm not sure if that's an accurate analogy. Few politicians would want to find themselves working in the climate Trump has found in Washington, (if anything, he has proven that a groundswell of popular support can't unseat a party establishment). Also, it simply would be inaccurate to describe Uber's actions as impotent . Edit: allow me to replace the word "found" with "created." I was just using a figure of speech.
>Few politicians would want to find themselves working in the climate Trump has found in Washington
I can think of a few: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_ele...
If you think the current sitting POTUS is an innocent victim of politics, then I have a bridge to sell you. Uber has used similar PR tactics in the past to deflect/detract from their actions.
Re: Uber Paid Hackers to Delete Stolen Data on 57M People
#305Someone needs to start a Top 10 Evil Corp web site. maybe a yearly most evil corp awards. because it looks like uber is relentlessly bad.
Not quite what you are looking for but the International Labor Rights Forum does a great job of trying to change some of the worst of the worst practices around the world (unfortunately, Uber is unlikely to make a top ten list).
Re: Uber Paid Hackers to Delete Stolen Data on 57M People
#306Man, I don't know if Uber is evil or if most tech companies are evil and Uber just doesn't drop the kind of money on PR strategery that an evil company need to drop in order to seem normal. But either way, holy cow does that company come off as toxic. They've completely revolutionized the drive-for-hire industry and all anyone ever hears about it what a D-bag their CEO is or how toxic and mysogonist their work enviro…
Uber is like the Donald Trump of corporations. It sets new ground in how openly vile you can be without any consequences. Just like Donald Trump the real danger is not in Uber itself but in whatever it will be that uses it as a role model.
Just yesterday, I got some serious flak for suggesting that changing one person in leadership wasn't enough to make them not evil. I'm sad to see just how bad this is/was, but I'm not one bit surprised.
Re: Uber Paid Hackers to Delete Stolen Data on 57M People
#307Earlier quoted context omitted.
>and all anyone ever hears about it what a D-bag their CEO is or how toxic and mysogonist their work environment is or how hard they work to spy on their employees and customers I don't think the average Joe is up to date with this news, or even care about.
Nope, they don't know. My non-tech friends are all using Uber / UberEats with no clue about the company, and the CEO. They just see an easy to use app to get what they want quickly.
All my friends have moved to Lyft -- not for political reasons, even. Just because Lyft is significantly cheaper in all the areas they live.
Re: Uber Paid Hackers to Delete Stolen Data on 57M People
#308Ever since Susan Fowler told her story about what happened to her at Uber, I have only used Lyft, and have encouraged all my friends to do the same. I plan to never use Uber again.
Uber employee chiming in - while I entirely sympathize with HN's frustrations around our ethics and can't really justify our actions around this data breach, it is very much worth noting that Lyft would not exist were it not for Uber's extremely aggressive practices. There were/are far too many protectionist policies at play at most locales that -- not out of pure coincidence -- needed a company as aggressive as Uber to pave the path for a better option for both riders and drivers (over existing taxis).
We fought all the battles, took a hit on our reputation and set it up nicely for Lyft who very smartly played along with the nice guy approach to capitalize. Net-net, no Uber would have most likely meant existing taxis everywhere and as most riders/drivers will tell you, there is nothing inherently better about either app, they offer the same, pay the same but vastly differ in perception.
That said, we took our aggressive attitude way too far. In an ideal world, Travis would have evolved or replaced himself a couple of years back once the company essentially reached escape velocity where our consumers themselves became our most fervent supporters. Unfortunately that did not play out and making a near perfect switch like that is probably unlikely.
Given this important context, I hope you will give Uber another chance as in the end, Dara and the employees are genuinely trying to evolve by doing the right things and putting all of this behind us. You can get some sense of this from going to sites like reddit.com/r/uberdrivers (or r/lyft) and seeing the changing perception at least from the driver side of things.
Re: Uber Paid Hackers to Delete Stolen Data on 57M People
#309Earlier quoted context omitted.
>and all anyone ever hears about it what a D-bag their CEO is or how toxic and mysogonist their work environment is or how hard they work to spy on their employees and customers I don't think the average Joe is up to date with this news, or even care about.
Nope, they don't know. My non-tech friends are all using Uber / UberEats with no clue about the company, and the CEO. They just see an easy to use app to get what they want quickly.
> My non-tech friends are all using Uber / UberEats with no clue about the company, and the CEO
Just like we don't know anything about the CEO of the product making your detergents, the CEO of the brand of clothes you purchase, the CEO of your oven at home... Not knowing about CEOs is rather the norm, not the exception, and ultimately if the product/service is good, the CEO does not matter for most people, or they are only going to care about it in passing and then return to their old habits. GoDaddy is still in business.
Re: Uber Paid Hackers to Delete Stolen Data on 57M People
#310> Here’s how the hack went down: Two attackers accessed a private GitHub coding site used by Uber software engineers and then used login credentials they obtained there to access data stored on an Amazon Web Services account that handled computing tasks for the company. From there, the hackers discovered an archive of rider and driver information. Later, they emailed Uber asking for money, according to the company. D…
You can use tools like Talisman which registers a Git hook to check if you are checking in anything that looks like secret.