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Uber blocks employees at work from chatting on Blind App

businessinsider.com

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Re: Uber blocks employees at work from chatting on Blind App

#21

Post by stevula »

taneq wrote: post #12
passivepinetree wrote: post #7

This is hopefully a prelude to a Streisand effect type situation here, but my biggest reaction to this came in the ad below the piece: an "article" describing the reason behind the F and J bumps on any keyboard. Does there really need to be an article about that? It seems like common sense, or something you might learn in any typing exercise ever.

There are probably enough younger people around who've rare even used a physical keyboard, let alone have formal touch-typing training. I imagine mentioning the 'home row' would usually just get you a blank stare.

They would have to be pretty young. I learned touch typing in public school ~20 years ago.

Re: Uber blocks employees at work from chatting on Blind App

#22

Post by paganel »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #20
Flammy wrote: post #11

First time hearing of Blind, can anyone share their experiences? (working at a startup so can't just sign up and see it myself...)

I'm on the Microsoft Blind forum as a former FTE as they don't (yet) revalidate accounts. MS was amongst the first, or perhaps the first, Blind forum. It started off as a successor to MiniMSFT so people used it to compare comp (salaries, raises, bonuses, stock awards) since then it's massively expanded into other companies all with their own private forums, there are also forums visible to everyone. The most popular…

> and people complaining about why Skype, OneDrive and SharePoint are so terrible.

I'm glad that people at MS themselves complain about how awful Skype has become. This proves that there are still sane people over there, for a moment I thought that me and my colleagues who still rely on Skype (Slack has never caught on with us) are not paranoid when we complain among ourselves about it.

Re: Uber blocks employees at work from chatting on Blind App

#23

Post by seanp2k2 »

taneq wrote: post #12
passivepinetree wrote: post #7

This is hopefully a prelude to a Streisand effect type situation here, but my biggest reaction to this came in the ad below the piece: an "article" describing the reason behind the F and J bumps on any keyboard. Does there really need to be an article about that? It seems like common sense, or something you might learn in any typing exercise ever.

There are probably enough younger people around who've rare even used a physical keyboard, let alone have formal touch-typing training. I imagine mentioning the 'home row' would usually just get you a blank stare.

Do they no longer teach typing as a mandatory class in ~6th grade? It seems even more relevant now than 16 years ago.

Re: Uber blocks employees at work from chatting on Blind App

#24

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

paganel wrote: post #22
DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm on the Microsoft Blind forum as a former FTE as they don't (yet) revalidate accounts. MS was amongst the first, or perhaps the first, Blind forum. It started off as a successor to MiniMSFT so people used it to compare comp (salaries, raises, bonuses, stock awards) since then it's massively expanded into other companies all with their own private forums, there are also forums visible to everyone. The most popular…

> and people complaining about why Skype, OneDrive and SharePoint are so terrible. I'm glad that people at MS themselves complain about how awful Skype has become. This proves that there are still sane people over there, for a moment I thought that me and my colleagues who still rely on Skype (Slack has never caught on with us) are not paranoid when we complain among ourselves about it.

Pretty much everyone at the IC-level at Microsoft is well-aware of the systemic issues plaguing many products - lower management too - but these issues don't get fixed because of whatever decisions being made at the Director level (mostly of the "evil" kind, like how improving UI responsiveness won't raise profitability but adding video ads will, or how no-one will switch to OneDrive-for-Business simply because the desktop client actually works - it'll be because the sales team drove a hard bargain with an enterprise customer and now their poor users are stuck with it).

I like to think I did my part - I made small UI/UX improvements that I snuck into my official feature work (it all passed peer-review and testing, don't worry) - things like bad margins/padding around controls, something with the wrong color scheme, etc.

Re: Uber blocks employees at work from chatting on Blind App

#25

Post by foepys »

Symbiote wrote: post #13
sfifs wrote: post #8

So employees are trying to chat "anonymously" on a tech company's wifi network? Seems remarkably dumb for tech employees. It should be assumed as a given that any company or hotel wifi network is monitored and HTTPS is quite possibly is MITMed.

An employee's personal phone wouldn't accept the certificate if HTTPS was MITMed.

You don't really have to MITM, you could just check the logs of the DNS server that the network DHCPs to the WiFi clients for queries to Blind's IP addresses.

This doesn't tell you the content but if an employee uses the app. Make of this what you want but given Uber's previous actions I don't think they would just ignore this.

Re: Uber blocks employees at work from chatting on Blind App

#27

Post by emmab »

omar3550 wrote: post #14

Can I somehow register to be an Uber employee on the app without actually being one? Would love to read all the crap employees are going through as lessons learned when I start my own company (one day). Any ideas? The blind app requires an uber.com email address. Any employees want to help out a fellow HN'er?

You could try spoofing your email address with the correct reply-to?

(if you do find any vulnerabilities you should of course report them responsibly)

Re: Uber blocks employees at work from chatting on Blind App

#28

Post by oh_sigh »

seanp2k2 wrote: post #23
taneq wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are probably enough younger people around who've rare even used a physical keyboard, let alone have formal touch-typing training. I imagine mentioning the 'home row' would usually just get you a blank stare.

Do they no longer teach typing as a mandatory class in ~6th grade? It seems even more relevant now than 16 years ago.

Would you teach typing on a physical keyboard, or on a virtual phone keyboard? A lot of young people don't use laptops/desktops.

Re: Uber blocks employees at work from chatting on Blind App

#29

Post by chinathrow »

omar3550 wrote: post #14

Can I somehow register to be an Uber employee on the app without actually being one? Would love to read all the crap employees are going through as lessons learned when I start my own company (one day). Any ideas? The blind app requires an uber.com email address. Any employees want to help out a fellow HN'er?

WTF how stupid is that? You use a company address to sign up, leaving trails within an internal mail service...

Re: Uber blocks employees at work from chatting on Blind App

#30

Post by logicallee »

>Many do on an anonymous chat app called Blind.

...

>And over 2,000 Uber employees in total use Blind, says Blind's head of operations Alex Shin.

Jebediah O. Springfield! As the "head of operations" at an "anonymous chat app" you have ONE JOB, Alex Shin! And you just blew it.

(To be explicit, I am saying Alex is way out of line for disclosing this information. An anonymous app should not have such information revealed even in the aggregrate - you can see what just happened as a result. Instead his public, and private, statements should have been "We do not disclose - confirm or deny - any users who may or may not use Blind, their affiliations or locations.")

In point of fact I do agree with sharing this news, however it should be presented disclosing as little information about employees as possible. Plus the app isn't doing a very good job if its traffic is easily distinguishable from other apps' traffic (technically making it possible for Uber to take the actions we've just read about, or directly monitor based on telephone MAC addresses, the exact employees using the app and the timing of their doing so).

But there's not so much that can be done about that. However, revealing the number of users at a company is not information that should be given out, in my opinion.

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