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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

#231

Post by cowpig »

necessity wrote: post #107
uabstraction wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine if the Founding Fathers decided to forgo western civilization and go live in the woods as nomadic hunter gatherers instead of standing up to British oppression... Or if all the blacks just listened to Marcus Garvey and went back to Africa instead of participating in the American Civil Rights Movement. This is basically what you're suggesting. We have the technological means to ensure reasonable levels of priv…

... except Uber, Google, carriers, etc, are not oppressive.

The fact that nobody's used a nuclear weapon offensively since WWII doesn't mean nuclear proliferation is fine.

Similarly, the proliferation of extremely powerful information is obviously dangerous, regardless of whether it is causing active harm currently.

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

#232

Post by wallace_f »

xapata wrote: post #213
wallace_f wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair point, however just because the phone company/NSA has this information, IMHO that doesn't make unnecessarily intrusive apps OK with me.

To each his own. In my view, the cat's out of the bag, so I might as well get a better product out of it.

Well, to me it's a problem. Here is an example of the kind of thing that is already happening: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20161130/09293036157/brook...

To me, if 1 is getting caught, it makes me question how many are not getting caught. Or are getting caught and let off the hook because the people around them won't hold them accountable.

If we continue to allow this, we're just going to expand the amount of abuse. And yes I know Uber is tracking location not access to your phone's mic.

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

#233

Post by bastawhiz »

loqwe wrote: post #201
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.

It's not reassuring to hear that lowly engineers can't access the data, but the axe-grinding execs can.

All of our data is actually hidden inside a mountain carved to look like Travis's head, a la Mt. Richmore from the hit 90s movie Richie Rich. There are many layers of security, including a voice recognition algorithm that only responds to Ryan Graves singing Never Gonna Give You Up.

But in all seriousness, I'd imagine the execs need to go through the same process an engineer would.

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

#234

Post by employee8000 »

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…

Uber employee here. We were told the reason to track up to 5 mins after the trip is for fraud, ex if a driver doesn't end the trip when she is supposed to. and to figure out where the pick up spots for each address are. A large building may have multiple points where people get picked up or dropped off and knowing those points would be very useful for the drivers and riders.

And just as a side note, take it with a few grains of salt but I know it's not easy to just trust a company with such personal information, and certainly I wouldn't either, but Uber as a company is very ethical and takes the responsibility that we are entrusted with very seriously.

There are a lot of things we do for our customers that isn't reported by the news, but we always try to do the right thing. Ex. When we had a few outages earlier this year, we made sure that the drivers who were active at the time were "made whole" by paying them for the time we were down.

Yes, there were issues a few years ago with statements and actions that were done, but the Uber today and the employees that work here now take a lot of pride in what they do. I would never have worked here if I didn't feel Uber was an ethical company. And neither would my coworkers. There are thousands of engineers now working here and we would be the first ones who would stand up to management if we felt that something nefarious or even careless was being done with user's personal information. Many of the company values revolve around "toe stepping" and "principled confrontation" and this means even against our own management.

So I know it's not easy to believe, and it's easy for me to say since I work here, but nothing nefarious is going on. If there was, we the engineers would be against it completely.

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

#235

Post by ghshephard »

xapata wrote: post #207
rm999 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Only 12 events per hour? I'd guess you're off by an order of magnitude.

They explicitly stated "Every 5 minutes" - which is 12 records/hour.

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

#236

Post by jonathankoren »

pinewurst wrote: post #95
jonathankoren wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Data driven and being a giant Hoover isn't the same thing. One is about making decisions rationally. The other is about acquisition for acquisition sake. Personally, over never seen any evidence that Uber actually knows what it's doing except making a shit-ton of money. Even the self-drivIng car strikes me more as a sideffext of having a bunch of money they needed to spend and it won the rock-paper-scissors contest a…

There's no evidence that Uber makes a shit-ton of money. What evidence exists, points the other way: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/11/can-uber-ever-deliver... http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/12/can-uber-ever-deliver...

I stand corrected. It was clear that all these were attempts to extract additional revenue from their existing user base and infrastructure, and weren't very targeted, but for some reason I thought this due to a combination of flattening profits in an grow-at-all-costs VC environment, and being drunk on money. (Google is a company that is drunk on money.)

Well... I still think Uber is drunk on money. Just VC money.

And I'm sure that if Uber does implode, Travis will still come out a hundred-millionare and a reputation of being a business genius, even though he never actually turned the growth into a successful sustainable business. Kind of like Sean Parker and Napster.

https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2016/12/01/2180647/the-taxi-unic...

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

#237

Post by jonathankoren »

HappyTypist wrote: post #67
jonathankoren wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't "development for the sake of development", no data collection is for that. This is to figure out where people are going. Addresses give you an idea, but they're not always precise. You may just give an intersection. Now, they're trying to figure out your actual destination. They're going to use this for monetization somehow. It's always about monetization. '

It's about self driving cars. So they know where to drive you to; to actually get somewhere.

That doesn't make any sense. Think about it. How does a cab driver get you to your location? Well you explicitly tell him by giving an address, or the name of a POI, or drop a pin on a map. You're then taken to the location you specified. Now, as you approach the location, you make a choice to either finish the ride, or abort it early by telling the driver, "Hey, this close enough. Just let me out wherever." At this point, the cab driver doesn't care, as long as he gets paid and you're happy it's a successful transaction.

So what does following you do? Well it finds your actual final destination. Which restaurant. Which house. Which apartment. Which store. So that brings up two questions. First, how does this true final destination information give a better rider experience? Well it's not exactly clear, since the rider gave explicit destination information at the start of the transaction, or explicitly ended the ride when they became satisfied. So, what's in it for the driver? Well that's not clear at all either, since rider was already satisfied and the driver got paid.

So what doesn't it do for Uber? Well, now they have popularity of specific POIs. Which bar. Which restaurant. Which store. That's valuable information. You could use that to deduce rider profiles that include things such as taste preferences, and income level. Then you can use that information for differential pricing (e.g. "This dude has a bunch of disposable income, charge him an extra two bucks.")

I'm sure there's other things you can do with it, but my point is that it's not useful for navigation, at all, but does give economic information which could be squeezed, and attempts to squeeze all the money they can from essentially a car service on demand app, is Uber's MO.

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

#238

Post by whatgoodisaroad »

mortenjorck wrote: post #197
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…

There's a simple way to send a message: Set the location services setting to "Never" and just enter addresses for now (copy and paste from Maps if it's easier). The important thing is that their analytics will pick this up, and if enough users do it, hopefully point toward re-enabling "While using."

You can also just switch it back to "Never" when you're done with your trip.

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

#239

Post by imh »

Too wrote: post #208
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.

It's tricky to get the ux of this right. Say you don't want to give Firefox background access because it should only be active while you are actively browsing. Then that one time when you are about to download a 4GB iso, you start the download and minimize the app or even close the phone, when you get back the download was cancelled after just 2%. :( Not saying it can't be done, just that there are many corner cases…

I think that many of the corner cases (background downloads) are cornery enough to justify giving users the options. The UX is hard, totally, but it's worth it.
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