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Uber employees used the platform to stalk celebrities and their exes

businessinsider.com

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Re: Uber employees used the platform to stalk celebrities and their exes

#191

Post by dx034 »

danso wrote: post #52

Creating an audit system and locking down "God" mode seems like something that would save Uber a lot of major headaches down the road. How often do Uber employees need to legitimately track someone's information other than in response to a customer request? I'm guessing about as often as the average Google employee needs access to a specific user's search history, which is to say, fairly rarely. Without locking down…

I guess the audit system is there, it's just a lot of log files. That's a point where they could use simple rules or ML to flag up possible misuse. E.g. support staff accessing profiles that aren't related to a ticket they were working on. Or a developer tracking a single rider/driver with same last name or address (or really any developer getting data for one rider only).

Won't have a 100% success rate but I guess it could prevent most cases of abuse. It's not that different from what banks do to detect internal fraud.

Re: Uber employees used the platform to stalk celebrities and their exes

#192

Post by SippinLean »

manyxcxi wrote: post #162
mwfj wrote: post #3

This seems like a good place to tell Uber users that the only way of removing your credit card details from your Uber account is to either: a) plead with Uber's customer service to do so or b) add another payment method (like another credit card) This, of course, is horribly bad practice. I can only imagine that they arrived at this very peculiar arrangement after extensive A/B testing - Uber has hired plenty of FB f…

I don't have any financial stake in them, I'm just a pleased patron, but it's this stuff that had me leaping to be an early adopter of Final[0]. Flat out, it's a credit card- but with their site or app you can generate single use numbers and CV2, or you can generate merchant locked numbers for things like Uber. There's a lot more they offer, but those two things are what I got it for and how I use it. [0] https://www…

Some caveats being an industry-low cash back (1%) and they charge an annual fee after the first year. Another alternative is to check with your current CC company, many already offer single-use numbers.

Re: Uber employees used the platform to stalk celebrities and their exes

#193

Post by dx034 »

ars wrote: post #102
ClassyJacket wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No you can't. Try getting a credit card with a fake name on it. Or a bank account.

If you already have a card with a real name, getting another one as an authorized user with a fake name is really easy.

If I'm not mistaken that's fraud and could get you into serious trouble.

Re: Uber employees used the platform to stalk celebrities and their exes

#194

Post by paulmd »

Hilyin wrote: post #73
mwfj wrote: post #3

This seems like a good place to tell Uber users that the only way of removing your credit card details from your Uber account is to either: a) plead with Uber's customer service to do so or b) add another payment method (like another credit card) This, of course, is horribly bad practice. I can only imagine that they arrived at this very peculiar arrangement after extensive A/B testing - Uber has hired plenty of FB f…

try changing your card's expiration date to an expired date, this has worked for me in other situations like this

Credit card vendors with a high reputation score have extraordinary powers.

During the credit card auth they are told whether the expiration, CVV, and ZIP code match and they can choose to accept the charge even if they do not match, although they do so at some additional risk of the charge being flagged/reversed. They can even charge expired and cancelled credit cards as well.

Expiration/CVV/ZIP checking are an additional security layer but they are there for the merchant, not for you. A credit card number is all a merchant actually needs to make a charge.

> Most consumers think their credit card expiration dates -- the month and year in which their cards are supposed to be renewed -- are a sacrosant security feature, without which a business can't process a payment.

> In fact, big players in the U.S. consumer-sales industry have developed informal agreements with credit-card issuers that allow charges to be made to consumers' credit cards without specifying the expiry month and year. This procedure works even after an individual's card has expired and been re-issued with a new expiration date.

http://www.datamation.com/columns/executive_tech/article.php...

Re: Uber employees used the platform to stalk celebrities and their exes

#195

Post by lightedman »

chippy wrote: post #163
droopyEyelids wrote: post #29

Can we make the rule that it's not OK to post negative stories about YCombinator companies on this site? There are a million places to talk negative about everyhing. Here, we're trying to build things. We know no one is perfect. Lets make this place a bastion of positivity instead of negativity.

You really should not be being downvoted as your opinion is shared (in my experience) by the majority of struggling startup founders. The founders want to get big and successful and view negativity by techies as at best needless pessimism and at worse as symptomatic of a kind of anti-capitalism. Capitalists who value the free market who are also the bosses and entrepreneurs see opposition to their money making effort…

Yes, they absolutely should be downvoted. Uber is not a YC company, and such disingenuity should not be given pass.

Re: Uber employees used the platform to stalk celebrities and their exes

#196

Post by SippinLean »

ProfessorLayton wrote: post #91

I've begun to ditch apps that I've perceived as going downhill regularly, and its been working out pretty well. Uber, Youtube, Facebook/Instagram, and Twitter have decent mobile sites. I can even silo whatever service I want into its own browser to limit tracking, and all location/permissions/etc are all sandboxed by the browser. A huge bonus is battery life + ad blocking.

Can you split fares and share trip progress with others using just the web app?

Re: Uber employees used the platform to stalk celebrities and their exes

#197

Post by madgar »

employee8000 wrote: post #28
EugeneOZ wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This quote from another employee also looks naive now (and I'm not trying to offend him): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13086454

No, I'm not naive, and I, proudly, stand behind everything I wrote. The person in the article was terminated before I joined, so I don't know what the systems were like back then, but every time I access production systems, I have a ton of messages telling me that our access is being completely tracked and we are prohibited from doing anything that was mentioned in the article. I haven't actually tested to see what I…

> every time I access production systems, I have a ton of messages telling me that our access is being completely tracked and we are prohibited from doing anything that was mentioned in the article. I haven't actually tested to see what I can get away with because I'm not in the habit of risking my job and career over curiosities.

You do know that this is literally the bare minimum level of user protection that you can legally get away with... right? That this isn't actually reassuring to anyone who has seen user data with any amount of protection?

If you're satisfied with this level of protection, I assume you're satisfied with it at the NSA/GHCQ.

As someone who works at an actual tech company, I can tell you without looking them up at least three layers that actually deny me access to user data. I know the team that actually audits any accesses made by those who can break glass, and I know who does the firing when the rules are broken.

And the products I work on aren't even regulated like those involved in finance/health/safety/etc.

Re: Uber employees used the platform to stalk celebrities and their exes

#198

Post by madgar »

aianus wrote: post #177
coldtea wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, you occasionally drive Uber as an experiment/hobby, not as a job, which is not the same experience as relying on it for your next meal.

Relying on Uber for your livelihood is really dumb. It's a part-time hobby job. (I drive for Uber part-time).

Someone should tell the folks at Uber that, somehow it's left out of the billboards they put up in poor neighborhoods. Instead they tell potential drivers that they'll take home a middle-class income.

Re: Uber employees used the platform to stalk celebrities and their exes

#199

Post by DougWebb »

coldtea wrote: post #129
michaelvoz wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually I do drive. I drive so I can sympathize with the partners I am serving and better server them by making the product the rely on to make money better, and more reliable.

So, you occasionally drive Uber as an experiment/hobby, not as a job, which is not the same experience as relying on it for your next meal.

That's uncalled for. How many software developers ever bother to use the software they develop, or work with (or even talk to) the people who use the software as part of their job? Actually doing the job that your users do, even part time, is fantastic dedication. Doing it full-time is absurd; when would he make use of what he's learned?

Re: Uber employees used the platform to stalk celebrities and their exes

#200

Post by halomru »

michaelvoz wrote: post #47
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #18

Don't forget that Uber now requires you allow them to access your location, even when you aren't using their app [1]. Side note: consider the value to foreign (or domestic) intelligence agencies of this weakly-guarded pot of gold. [1] http://www.theverge.com/2016/11/30/13763714/uber-location-da...

Disclaimer: I work for Uber. However, my opinions are mine. I am also not defending nor attacking in any way Uber gathering location data. With that out of the way - you know your cell phone carrier already has this data right? They have way better data than Uber ever will about all your habits, including establishing relationships based on who you call, which sites you visit, who you are signed up on a plan with, et…

>you know your cell phone carrier already has this data right?

No, they don't. My carrier has coarse location data because they know which cell tower served me. Uber has much more precise GPS data. That's the difference between knowing that I'm in the same building as Edward Snowden and knowing that I'm in the same neighborhood.

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