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American Airlines is trying to stop a popular app used by flight attendants

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Re: American Airlines is trying to stop a popular app used by flight attendants

#161

Post by LegitShady »

OJFord wrote: post #94
arciini wrote: post #21

I'm sad that this is happening to an app that's useful to its users, but the reality is that scraping is legal, always possible, but difficult. This particular case is a bit harder since it's not purely using public data, but may still qualify since it's likely scraping with legally-obtained credentials. I know of businesses (scraping for ride-sharing, scraping for business intelligence for retailers, scraping from L…

> the reality is that scraping is legal, always possible, but difficult. > This particular case is a bit harder since it's not purely using public data, but may still qualify since it's likely scraping with legally-obtained credentials. No, it's easy: they're employees, they can be told they're not allowed to do that. Doesn't matter if the app's legally allowed to exist or not.

>No, it's easy: they're employees, they can be told they're not allowed to do that. Doesn't matter if the app's legally allowed to exist or not.

They're unionized employees. Someone running a company looking to make their life harder for no reason needs to think five times before they start making arbitrary and baseless demands for changes in policy. It could end up costing you tens of millions of dollars because you forgot that employees are still people and your demands will be met with demands in return.

Re: American Airlines is trying to stop a popular app used by flight attendants

#162

Post by TallGuyShort »

OJFord wrote: post #94
arciini wrote: post #21

I'm sad that this is happening to an app that's useful to its users, but the reality is that scraping is legal, always possible, but difficult. This particular case is a bit harder since it's not purely using public data, but may still qualify since it's likely scraping with legally-obtained credentials. I know of businesses (scraping for ride-sharing, scraping for business intelligence for retailers, scraping from L…

> the reality is that scraping is legal, always possible, but difficult. > This particular case is a bit harder since it's not purely using public data, but may still qualify since it's likely scraping with legally-obtained credentials. No, it's easy: they're employees, they can be told they're not allowed to do that. Doesn't matter if the app's legally allowed to exist or not.

I'm not sure I interpret the article or the parent comment as saying American Airlines isn't allowed to do this. They're just making life harder for their employees and dont seem to be addressing the problem they're working around. It's just a little whistleblowing that they're a shitty employer.

I think what the parent comment is trying to say is that their description of their approach here as "sophisticated bot detection" is a little bit like someone calling me a hacker because I have my terminal open during the flight. There is an intentional use of words here trying to make the app developer sound like the bad guy.

Re: American Airlines is trying to stop a popular app used by flight attendants

#163

Post by dkonofalski »

dpifke wrote: post #159
lostdog wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they also deserve to have access to their work schedules, and I bet a good lawyer could argue that "access" should be interpreted broadly here.

Presumably the non-public data is being scraped using the employees' credentials (i.e. username and password). It is perfectly reasonable for an employer to have a policy which states, "do not give your work username and password to a third party." I can't imagine a court ordering otherwise. Providing an API for this data is a non-trivial amount of work, involving significant technical and compliance challenges. Empl…

If the scraping is happening "on-device", though, then they're not providing their details to a third party. They're simply accessing their schedules. Otherwise, pulling up their schedules in any web browser would be considered giving their credentials to a third party since that's basically what's happening here. It would be like logging in to the aa.com employee site and then installing a Chrome extension that reads the page that was downloaded. Nothing is given to the Chrome extension in terms of credentials, only page content.

Re: American Airlines is trying to stop a popular app used by flight attendants

#164

Post by smcl »

kleiba wrote: post #156
jmslbam wrote: post #24

Reminds me of those Stockholm parents that built an app by obtaining data, in a legal way, that worked better the the manufactorer build themselfs.... https://www.wired.com/story/sweden-stockholm-school-app-open... :)

Landgren would dig through endless convoluted menus to find out what his children were doing at school. If working out what his children needed in their gym kit was a hassle, then working out how to report them as sick was a nightmare. This seems very removed from my own school days: - find out what the children were doing at school : you couldn't, really, the curricula were not public. You could ask your kids after…

> What else could it be?

Swimming trunks/swimsuit. Clean indoor trainers for basketball/volleyball/circuit training/etc, or scruffy outdoor ones for cross-country running, orienteering or anything muddy outside. In winter they may need to take something warmer if there's outdoor activities planned, some locations in the north or near mountains may even do skiing or cross-country skiing. In our school in winter time we sometimes did scottish country dancing, so you didn't really need "normal" P.E. class gear if that's what was on.

I don't know what this school in particular offered but there's a bunch of possibilities.

Re: American Airlines is trying to stop a popular app used by flight attendants

#165

Post by chx »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #152
chx wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

THIS IS NOT TRUE! BEWARE OF THIS! In reality, you are basically relying on the fact that no one can tell when you open your laptop whether you check personal email or work email etc. But legislation wise you very well might be in breach of visitor conditions. And if you stay long enough, taxes might kick in. Canada is a notable exemption because IRCC issued a note on What kind of activities are not considered to be “…

A C-level executive at a place I worked went to another country specific to scout out talent the company could hire remotely. Given that he was obviously working there I asked how he got a permit for that. His answer was that he got a tourist visa and was on vacation, so it was obviously legal for him to work while in the country.

> His answer was that he got a tourist visa and was on vacation, so it was obviously legal for him to work while in the country.

Well, that depends. For example, the United States has a B1/B2 visa where you can do business things like meetings. That's not work. But still, if you are a tourist aka you get a rare B2 only visa then no what he did was not legal -- and just because he is C level doesn't mean he won't breach the law in this. Might be out of arrogance or ignorance, even.

His answer sounds like "I am a rich man, laws, pfft" to me.

Re: American Airlines is trying to stop a popular app used by flight attendants

#166

Post by dpifke »

dkonofalski wrote: post #163
dpifke wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably the non-public data is being scraped using the employees' credentials (i.e. username and password). It is perfectly reasonable for an employer to have a policy which states, "do not give your work username and password to a third party." I can't imagine a court ordering otherwise. Providing an API for this data is a non-trivial amount of work, involving significant technical and compliance challenges. Empl…

If the scraping is happening "on-device", though, then they're not providing their details to a third party. They're simply accessing their schedules. Otherwise, pulling up their schedules in any web browser would be considered giving their credentials to a third party since that's basically what's happening here. It would be like logging in to the aa.com employee site and then installing a Chrome extension that read…

It might be possible to build this app in a way that none of the information ever leaves the device. I would be very surprised if that was the case here.

Most large IT departments have a list of approved browsers and browser extensions. The scenario you described would fall under the same policy. If Chrome uploaded the content of intranet web pages to Google, I expect it would be banned as well.

Re: American Airlines is trying to stop a popular app used by flight attendants

#167

Post by gwillen »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #154
TrueGeek wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American Airlines was featured in a video at Microsoft Ignite last week. They showed how everyone involved in a flight talks to each other through Teams and how Microsoft / AA has worked closely together to get this working. I'm wondering if AA doesn't want this app being used instead?

That's kind of interesting. I take so many flights I never really remember one from the next. But I do remember at least one flight attendant letting us know that videoconferencing in flight is a felony. I could never find any such regulation, but I guess that wasn't an AA flight.

Sounds like the flight attendant had an unusually severe case of "making shit up".

Re: American Airlines is trying to stop a popular app used by flight attendants

#168

Post by toss1 »

munk-a wrote: post #144
toss1 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>This kind of old, hierarchical thinking from the 1950s needs to go away. Yes, it does, but no, it won't. Just as democracies must always be better armed and prepared than expansionist autocracies, or the autocracies will take over, people need to be better armed and prepared than those who want to exploit them, or they will get exploited. Unfortunately, the exploiters often arrive better armed and prepared, and it…

Well the winning move in these cases is usually unionization - when a large number of employees are being exploited by an employer a union that allows collective bargaining can force the employer to act in a more sane manner.

A union is indeed a good form of being forearmed, and more should take advantage of it.

That said, it does not prevent all exploitation. IIRC, the FA's in this story have a union and a contract, yet this form of exploitative behavior is not prevented.

Re: American Airlines is trying to stop a popular app used by flight attendants

#169

Post by oeYeah »

kleiba wrote: post #156
jmslbam wrote: post #24

Reminds me of those Stockholm parents that built an app by obtaining data, in a legal way, that worked better the the manufactorer build themselfs.... https://www.wired.com/story/sweden-stockholm-school-app-open... :)

Landgren would dig through endless convoluted menus to find out what his children were doing at school. If working out what his children needed in their gym kit was a hassle, then working out how to report them as sick was a nightmare. This seems very removed from my own school days: - find out what the children were doing at school : you couldn't, really, the curricula were not public. You could ask your kids after…

I'm not sure how it is in Stockholm, but in Norway sometimes we had gym outside in a park instead of inside, so different shoes and clothes. And if there is a school-outing to a museum or a montain hike or the dreaded "skidag", skiday, where the entire school would travel up into the montains and do various snow and ski related activates. So it can be a big deal if you don't know what your kid needs any particular day. I'm born in 2002, so they usualy solved this with notes in our backpacks. I think they now mostly solwe this via SMSes to the parents, if it's not sensitive information.

Re: American Airlines is trying to stop a popular app used by flight attendants

#170

Post by Dracophoenix »

oxymoron wrote: post #107

I am not convinced that AA is actively trying to block this app. I used to work for a major anti-bot vendor, so from that I know that all airlines suffer heavily from price scraping and try to protect their flight search endpoints. The impact to them is due to fees from the centralized data services that all airlines depend on.

Then how do discount sites like Kayak, Expedia, or Matrix ITA/ Google Flights work without a hitch? The ticket prices are no lower than what SABRE will offer and it doesn't seem like AA is losing money in those cases.
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