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Uber Paid Hackers to Delete Stolen Data on 57M People

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Re: Uber Paid Hackers to Delete Stolen Data on 57M People

#361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I propose a new law, similar to Godwin's. "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Trump approaches 1"

You can't say anything approaching positive about Trump. You will be down voted. The vehement supporters of freedom of speech doesn't support this. Well, the irony.

FYI, down voting is speech.

Re: Uber Paid Hackers to Delete Stolen Data on 57M People

#362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I disagree that Lyft would not exist; Lyft invented the UberX category. Originally Kalanick complained about Lyft's creative interpretation of the law, before succumbing to internal employee pressure to introduce a competitor. Years after its introduction, Kalanick admitted that he didn't believe in UberX until it demonstrated its success. That said, almost all of the notable legislative and regulatory battles were c…

> Lyft invented the UberX category

In fact, there was a company called SideCar[1] who popularized the idea of ridesharing before Uber and Lyft. There was a time, maybe 2013 or 2014 when I exclusively used Sidecar until Uber became more prominent. Uber was only offering their high end cars at that time.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidecar_(company)

Re: Uber Paid Hackers to Delete Stolen Data on 57M People

#363
post #4

Ever 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…

I drove for Lyft and Uber during that era, and I promise you lyft was doing just as much to fight those protectionist policies, they were doing it with a lighter touch. In many places they were making headway, and then Uber's asshole tactics wound up turning it into a two-steps-back situation (getting ridership access to San Diego Airport e.g.)

Re: Uber Paid Hackers to Delete Stolen Data on 57M People

#364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This happened last year.

But the coverup persisted until just now. Kalanick has been gone for almost half a year.

The new CEO has only been around for a month or two. I imagine it's a lot of information slowly coming forth.

Re: Uber Paid Hackers to Delete Stolen Data on 57M People

#365
post #106

Every day we see more evidence that boards of directors and senior management should be personally accountable financially and with respect to their liberty for the company they are managing or overseeing doing foul things that they ought to have known. The "I didn't know, I just took a vast salary to play golf" argument should not be any kind of defence. If there is the real prospect of going to jail, golfers will r…

I'm in charge of security at a large e-commerce company. I do not play golf. I mostly live in fear. No sensible person would sign up for the CSO position if they risked jail time when their company gets hacked. You can't really control it. A random engineer could make a mistake that gets hackers a step closer. Or it could be a zero-day vulnerability that nobody knows how to protect against. There are millions of moti…

You're in charge of security at a large e-commerce company, and your view is that your company is bound to get hacked?

I think that's a very sad commentary on how little your company values security.

Re: Uber Paid Hackers to Delete Stolen Data on 57M People

#366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many people do you know that listen to Rush Limbaugh or read Breitbart? Apparently none. Personally, I like him quite a bit, but to be fair I know that outside of my own echo chamber of my news and social media feeds, that there are a lot of people who don't like him, and where that negativity is coming from.

He also gets a lot of heat in leftist circles for his anti-union tactics & rhetoric.

Would you please stop routinely creating bulk accounts to post with here? This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

HN is a community. If users don't have some consistent identity for others to relate to, we may as well have no usernames and no community at all. That would be a different kind of forum.

Anonymity is fine, and throwaways for a specific purpose are ok. Just not routinely.

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

Re: Uber Paid Hackers to Delete Stolen Data on 57M People

#367
post #4

Ever 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.

And I'd encourage any hiring manager to ask some pointed questions of anybody who has Uber on their resume. Maybe they're a good or naive person who just happened to end up in a bad place. But maybe they're willing to turn a blind eye to discrimination, harassment, or lawbreaking.

Uber is one of the fastest growing companies in the world, and it did an enormous amount of good in challenging laws prohibiting voluntary exchange and in expanding transportation options (which had benefits that included reducing DUI), while making many serious mistakes. I don't think it can be characterized as a "bad place", and I don't think many hiring managers will consider having experience at Uber a black mark. Quite the opposite.

Re: Uber Paid Hackers to Delete Stolen Data on 57M People

#368

Man, 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…

>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.

I don't know. I've received a lot of flak for even using Uber from non-tech friends/dates recently. I think the continual tide of negative publicity is definitely having a material effect on their brand image.

Re: Uber Paid Hackers to Delete Stolen Data on 57M People

#369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never quite know how to think about them. On the one hand, they’d changed an entire industry in a way that people wanted but was getting serious resistance from the entrenched players. They had to break a lot of rules and go around a lot of people with a whole lot of connections to get where they are and in the process made a lot of enemies. I expect blowback. I expect negative news. They essentially pulled it off…

AirBnb had to fight a very similar path and the only bad press I can remember about them was that tone deaf/ offensive political marketing campaign they had.

They also spammed Craigslist users (violating TOS and basic manners) with emails from bots pretending to be women.

Re: Uber Paid Hackers to Delete Stolen Data on 57M People

#370
post #40
post #10

"In January 2016, the New York attorney general fined Uber $20,000 for failing to promptly disclose an earlier data breach in 2014." Because you know...20k really really hurts for a company like Uber.

I recall a story (that I'll probably recount incorrectly) about a daycare business deciding that too many parents were arriving late to pick up their children (meaning that staff had to stay late with the kids), so they instituted a fine for late pickups. The result was that more parents were late. The reason being that the parents effectively considered the fine a "late pickup fee", and one they were more than willi…

our daycare calls the police ... quite a deterrent I'd say
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