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Uber Now Tracks Passengers’ Locations Even After They’re Dropped Off

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Re: Uber Now Tracks Passengers’ Locations Even After They’re Dropped Off

#171

Post by abstrakraft »

lbotos wrote: post #168
nojvek wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it's the same company that creepily gives me a code interview in the app because it knows I go to a software company couple of times a week and pushes a job ad. Uber has a lot of sensitive information regarding users. Who goes where and when. This in the wrong hand can be very disastrous. E.g Trump to Uber: "gimme list of all people who to to mosques frequently. No tax for you." Uber: "Here you go. Just don't te…

While I love this scenario from a "Trump could abuse his power" narrative, have there been any recorded cases of businesses in America getting "Secret" tax breaks? Seems like it'd be pretty hard to pull off with the IRS. Sure, maybe they "Bundled" that data it in to some ~other~ lobbied tax deal, but I'd imagine someone would whistle blow that pretty quick in this post-snowden world?

>> Seems like it'd be pretty hard to pull off with the IRS.

Unless the IRS itself is the instrument of abuse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS_targeting_controversy

Re: Uber Now Tracks Passengers’ Locations Even After They’re Dropped Off

#172

Post by bastawhiz »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #149
bastawhiz wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You missed my point. I said that if we accidentally started collecting all user locations, you wouldn't have to worry about us getting an NSL because our servers would have crashed and burned and no data would have managed to have been collected. Uber's infrastructure is completely incapable of handling that volume of data, because it was never designed to handle it. As far as software bugs go, accidentally collectin…

> Uber's infrastructure is completely incapable of handling that volume of data, because it was never designed to handle it. That is completely irrelevant. The powers that be can siphon off the data as it comes in. The danger is in receiving excess data in the first place, making yourself a more enticing target for collection activities.

That Uber could have a bug that sends all location data is irrelevant. Google, Apple, Lyft, Yelp, Foursquare, Microsoft, or any other company that has any app that accesses and transmits location data could have an identical bug that presents an identical problem, and Google and Apple already regularly collect and transmit that data all the time without it being a bug. And being a bug of biblical proportions, it'll get resolved very, very quickly because it would be causing a hugely expensive outage.

Uber also only uses strong TLS for connections, so "the powers that be" will have a heck of a time taking a real heap of gigabits (terabits?) per second of encrypted data and doing anything particularly useful with it.

Re: Uber Now Tracks Passengers’ Locations Even After They’re Dropped Off

#173

Post by jka »

joatmon-snoo wrote: post #68
untog wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't know until someone investigates, obviously. But if you have to choose between an app that definitely does that and an app that might do it, it makes sense to use the one that might in the meantime. There's an opportunity for Lyft to be "Uber, but for not scummy business practises" here, but I suppose most users don't really care. Austin would have been a good test of that, but Lyft withdrew along with Uber.

Lyft, sadly, doesn't seem to have the talent it needs to pull this off. Although they're still worth something, it just doesn't seem like Lyft will be able to eke it out unless something really game-changing happens to Uber. I've been a longtime Lyft user because of the stories that surfaced a few years ago about Uber considering blackmailing reporters and politicians with their ride data, but the last time I had to…

Lyft engineer here, so bear in mind any bias, but we take account and data privacy very seriously, and have a data privacy team which focuses on these kind of issues.

From where I stand, we have great engineering and product talent. Perception is tricky - I see that we're very agile with (sometimes far) fewer resources, from the view I have.

I'd be glad to dig into the auth issues you ran into if you're able to ping privately with a few more details.

Re: Uber Now Tracks Passengers’ Locations Even After They’re Dropped Off

#174

Post by bastawhiz »

pilsetnieks wrote: post #170
bastawhiz wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Uber engineer here) The data is used for (or can be used for) a number of practical and important purposes. These are some examples of what we do as well as what we could do with such data: - Fighting fraud - Improving "suggested pickup" locations - Improvements around POOL (we'd rather suggest a location that's easy to pick up from than one that's unsafe) - Figuring out what side of the street you end up on (we can…

> Individual users' data is very closely guarded internally. It's immensely difficult to look at user data without specific access. Overwhelmingly, this data is queried in aggregate and fed into machine learning systems. The risk of abuse is exceptionally low. It is impossible to take your word for it. After so, so many companies have been caught intentionally or unintentionally mishandling user data, there is no rea…

> It is impossible to take your word for it.

I'm not asking you to. If you'd like to come in and interview for a position and eventually see for yourself, though, I'm happy to accept your résumé. :)

Re: Uber Now Tracks Passengers’ Locations Even After They’re Dropped Off

#175

Post by babesh »

bastawhiz wrote: post #142
ak2196 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> The risk of abuse is exceptionally low. I call bullshit. This coming from the same guys who were mapping one night stands using ride data? What were you guys studying there. Fornicating habits of young adults in large metropolitans? http://www.whosdrivingyou.org/blog/ubers-deleted-rides-of-gl... I almost forgot about the time you guys were tracking journalists. Uber has a reputation and history of being a "shady"…

> Uber has a reputation and history of being a "shady" company. I'm not going to try to defend our reputation. But it's worth saying that things are locked down _pretty damn tight_ around sensitive data. I've worked in enterprise file storage in the past, and the internal security at Uber is far better (relatively speaking), and continues to mature.

The whole point is that you are providing an all or nothing choice for no good reason. Why do you FORCE that instead of letting the user choose to allow location while using the app?

Re: Uber Now Tracks Passengers’ Locations Even After They’re Dropped Off

#176

Post by 0xmohit »

justinator wrote: post #153
bastawhiz wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Uber has a reputation and history of being a "shady" company. I'm not going to try to defend our reputation. But it's worth saying that things are locked down _pretty damn tight_ around sensitive data. I've worked in enterprise file storage in the past, and the internal security at Uber is far better (relatively speaking), and continues to mature.

> things are locked down _pretty damn tight_ around sensitive data Commenting, to save this little gem for the inevitable time when Uber gets hacked. Again.

Remember that not all hacks are made public.

Re: Uber Now Tracks Passengers’ Locations Even After They’re Dropped Off

#177

Post by rm999 »

bastawhiz wrote: post #128
stirner wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your haughty attitude toward privacy is really chilling. If Uber hasn't received a NSL [1] I would be astounded, and your employer doesn't have a great track record [2]. Please think hard about the world you are helping to create. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter [2] http://www.buzzfeed.com/johanabhuiyan/uber-is-investigating-...

You missed my point. I said that if we accidentally started collecting all user locations, you wouldn't have to worry about us getting an NSL because our servers would have crashed and burned and no data would have managed to have been collected. Uber's infrastructure is completely incapable of handling that volume of data, because it was never designed to handle it. As far as software bugs go, accidentally collectin…

> Uber's infrastructure is completely incapable of handling that volume of data,

The data volume isn't very big. Let's assume Uber records locations for 20 million users and pings each user every 5 minutes. We're talking about 20 million users * 12 events per hour * 24 hours * 16 bytes (my generous assumption of how much it would cost to store a user id, timestamp, and precise long/lat data) = ~100 GB a day or 3 TB a month. And 20 million / (5 * 60) = 67k events per second.

I could probably build out the infrastructure to process and store a year's worth of user location data for 20k a year on AWS.

Re: Uber Now Tracks Passengers’ Locations Even After They’re Dropped Off

#178

Post by pmiller2 »

nojvek wrote: post #160
yladiz wrote: post #34

I saw this earlier and had hopes that the update would just let me choose "While Using" in the app settings, like some other apps allow you even if they request access even while not using the app, but the settings only allow for "Always" or "Never" on iPhone. However, you can use Uber without allowing GPS, so it's not all or nothing. I'm a little disturbed that they need any information after I use Uber though. They…

Well it's the same company that creepily gives me a code interview in the app because it knows I go to a software company couple of times a week and pushes a job ad. Uber has a lot of sensitive information regarding users. Who goes where and when. This in the wrong hand can be very disastrous. E.g Trump to Uber: "gimme list of all people who to to mosques frequently. No tax for you." Uber: "Here you go. Just don't te…

Code interview in the app? What do you mean?

Re: Uber Now Tracks Passengers’ Locations Even After They’re Dropped Off

#179

Post by babesh »

amluto wrote: post #26

I really wish that both Android and iOS had an option to outright prevent an app from doing anything in the background. No sensors, no location, no push notifications, no network access, no CPU time, URL protocols, no nothing. If I don't click the little app icon, the app shouldn't run, full stop.

You can do that already with user exposed controls on iOS. Just force shut down the app.

Re: Uber Now Tracks Passengers’ Locations Even After They’re Dropped Off

#180

Post by TAForObvReasons »

pmiller2 wrote: post #178
nojvek wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it's the same company that creepily gives me a code interview in the app because it knows I go to a software company couple of times a week and pushes a job ad. Uber has a lot of sensitive information regarding users. Who goes where and when. This in the wrong hand can be very disastrous. E.g Trump to Uber: "gimme list of all people who to to mosques frequently. No tax for you." Uber: "Here you go. Just don't te…

Code interview in the app? What do you mean?

first search result: http://www.businessinsider.com/uber-recruiting-engineers-thr...
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