Former employees say Lyft staffers spied on passengers • Hacker News Board

Re: Former employees say Lyft staffers spied on passengers

#61

Post by lenzm » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 11:51 PM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #31

musage wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you do when you pay with 20$ for something, but get change for 10$? Why are "argue with them", "accept the loss and move on", "karate chop" and infinite other things not among the options? > You need to know that I was in their vehicle, otherwise how can they charge me if I ruin their car. You need to know they were my driver. How did taxi drivers handle that for the last nearing 100 years? People before us m…

Taxi drivers didn’t have a intermediary in the sky taking its vig.

No, the medallion owners just lived in deluxe apartments in the sky.

Re: Former employees say Lyft staffers spied on passengers

#62

Post by azernik » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 11:52 PM UTC

303space wrote: post #52

lhorie wrote: post #2

Someone I know was just commenting that from convos w/ people in other companies, it seems many startups have benefitted from not being under the limelight, and thus had the chance to quietly clean up their own messes while Uber was taking all the heat from the media.

Does anyone else find this whole thing more than a bit hypocritical? Lyft is always telling you they are the better/ethical/woke ridesharing option - now their employees are reporting a culture of abusing customer privacy. I wish they had taken a look at their own practices before running million dollar ad campaigns full of celebrities celebrating their ‘wokeness’.

Uber had the kicker that invasion of privacy was a top-down policy explicitly used by management.

Lyft still done fucked up, but not to the level that Uber did.

Re: Former employees say Lyft staffers spied on passengers

#63

Post by opportune » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 11:53 PM UTC

ddinh wrote: post #58

pookeh wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in Canada if you have access to the central medical records you can look up anyone but (a) if you are not a doc and are not assigned to the case or (b) you are looking up yourself or a family member, you immediately get a call and get fired on the spot. (Source: Wife works at the hospital and has seen some people get fired shortly after unauhorized access.)

Just curious - why is looking up yourself an offense?

You don't really own your medical record, also doctors add notes to your medical record that you may not like. For example your medical record may say that you don't follow up with medication, abuse drugs, have psychiatric/personality problems, etc. which patients could be sensitive about.

Re: Former employees say Lyft staffers spied on passengers

#64

Post by s73ver_ » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 11:53 PM UTC

jtmcmc wrote: post #36

mattmanser wrote: post #10

Lyft tells TechCrunch that staffers in several departments that might need access to this data for their job have the ability to look up this information See, that's a complete lie and that's the attitude that needs to sop. No-one needed access. Analytics definitely didn't. Engineers never did. Customer services should have to request permission from the customer before accessing sensitive data, with a valid reason.…

What's the need for anything? Your argument seems to be predicated on a very specific definition of what need is which is somewhat at odds with most of the rest of the world.

I think it's more that the absolute "need" has not been demonstrated.

Re: Former employees say Lyft staffers spied on passengers

#65

Post by nkkollaw » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 11:54 PM UTC

duxup wrote: post #60

nkkollaw wrote: post #56

I was talking about this with my girlfriend at dinner tonight. While we were eating, I noticed a few cameras that got a view of the whole restaurant, and wondered: of course filming the restaurant might be useful in case of a robbery (?) or for insurance, etc., but what are the chances the minimum-wage employees that checks those DON'T use it to check out hot women or embarassing stuff that happens from time to time.…

"the minimum-wage employees that checks those" Does anyone even look at them? I just assume most video gets recorded and then recorded over or somehow discarded. Outside of situations like say an airport or casino I doubt anyone is actively watching most of the cameras unless something happens after the fact.

Perhaps not actively, but I bet in case of a hot woman or something weird going on they'll know where the monitors are.

I also have two separate family members that have businesses with cameras, and they both look at what's going from an app on their iPads while they watch TV in the evening (actually, having seen them do it is probably why I know videos at businesses are not handled properly).

Re: Former employees say Lyft staffers spied on passengers

#66

Post by mikeash » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 11:54 PM UTC

Consultant32452 wrote: post #35

musage wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you do when you pay with 20$ for something, but get change for 10$? Why are "argue with them", "accept the loss and move on", "karate chop" and infinite other things not among the options? > You need to know that I was in their vehicle, otherwise how can they charge me if I ruin their car. You need to know they were my driver. How did taxi drivers handle that for the last nearing 100 years? People before us m…

Well, back in the old days if we wanted to complain we'd write it down on a piece of paper, wrap that piece of paper inside another piece of paper, and then put that in an unlocked box out in our yard. That's similarly how we'd order products, out of magazines. Only in that case on the paper we'd include things like our bank account information that we'd put in the unlocked box in our yard. I'm not suggesting that th…

I generally agree with you, but I think it should be pointed out that unauthorized access to that unlocked box carries severe punishment. A big part of the problem with things like this is that not only are there no controls preventing access to private info, but there are also few if any consequences.

Re: Former employees say Lyft staffers spied on passengers

#67

Post by mrkurt » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 11:54 PM UTC

dominotw wrote: post #44

lhorie wrote: post #2

Someone I know was just commenting that from convos w/ people in other companies, it seems many startups have benefitted from not being under the limelight, and thus had the chance to quietly clean up their own messes while Uber was taking all the heat from the media.

I always suspected that uber flames were fanned by its many competitors.

Uber's dumpster fire didn't need any fanning.

Re: Former employees say Lyft staffers spied on passengers

#68

Post by jrowley » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 11:55 PM UTC

ddinh wrote: post #58

pookeh wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in Canada if you have access to the central medical records you can look up anyone but (a) if you are not a doc and are not assigned to the case or (b) you are looking up yourself or a family member, you immediately get a call and get fired on the spot. (Source: Wife works at the hospital and has seen some people get fired shortly after unauhorized access.)

Just curious - why is looking up yourself an offense?

Not infrequently there are notes in patients charts that only care providers can see. This practice is becoming frowned upon in some circles however, in lieu of more transparency. I imagine it being really useful for certain scenarios (e.g. mental illness or documentation a sensitive domestic relationship, where you wouldn't want a potentially abuse family member to see comments about their behavior in a relative's chart).

Re: Former employees say Lyft staffers spied on passengers

#69

Post by mynameisvlad » Thu, Jan 25, 2018, 11:55 PM UTC

jtmcmc wrote: post #36

mattmanser wrote: post #10

Lyft tells TechCrunch that staffers in several departments that might need access to this data for their job have the ability to look up this information See, that's a complete lie and that's the attitude that needs to sop. No-one needed access. Analytics definitely didn't. Engineers never did. Customer services should have to request permission from the customer before accessing sensitive data, with a valid reason.…

What's the need for anything? Your argument seems to be predicated on a very specific definition of what need is which is somewhat at odds with most of the rest of the world.

Can you actually refute the parent comment's argument? Because it seems more than reasonable to me.

Analytics and Engineering definitely don't need this level of data access for any sort of day-to-day work. I work on analytics tools, and at best, anonymized and generalized data is needed, but never specific customer data. We specifically strip out any PII on data that might reach developers and need to request permission to access any sort of customer data (and I haven't had to do that in a long time).

CS/T&S/Insurance might need per-customer data, but they also don't need blanket access to all customers' data. If they need to handle a specific customer's data, there should be a request made that is logged and audited, and ideally with customer approval.

Re: Former employees say Lyft staffers spied on passengers

#70

Post by chaostheory » Fri, Jan 26, 2018, 12:00 AM UTC

mattmanser wrote: post #10

Lyft tells TechCrunch that staffers in several departments that might need access to this data for their job have the ability to look up this information See, that's a complete lie and that's the attitude that needs to sop. No-one needed access. Analytics definitely didn't. Engineers never did. Customer services should have to request permission from the customer before accessing sensitive data, with a valid reason.…

> What's the need?

It isn't needed all the time but the one scenario I can think of is for debugging. Sometimes it's hard to dissect or even replicate a bug without the original data.