Uber blocks employees at work from chatting on Blind App • Hacker News Board

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

#31

Post by dajohnson89 » Sat, Feb 25, 2017, 12:09 PM UTC

chinathrow wrote: post #29

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...

Yeah, I wondered the same thing. Verification by company email reduces spam/noise, so I understand why it's done. Probably useful to have non-employees filtered out. But there's no way I'd trust the service enough to use it. Not to mention my latent fear of a data breach/leak ruining my career.

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

#32

Post by asdfologist » Sat, Feb 25, 2017, 12:22 PM UTC

thewhitetulip wrote: post #9

Even in 2017, we are still not understanding that if you block something it becomes more exciting just for the fact that it was banned, ignore it and it'll die.

China's a counterexample. Their censorship efforts are pretty damn effective.

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

#33

Post by sand500 » Sat, Feb 25, 2017, 1:07 PM UTC

chinathrow wrote: post #29

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...

Just got the app. Apparently you just need to add your work email as your primary email on LinkedIn.

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

#34

Post by throwanem » Sat, Feb 25, 2017, 1:14 PM UTC

RyJones wrote: post #15

Symbiote wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If the employer uses an MDM as a precondition for email access, it might.

That's a hard stop for me; no employer may have that degree of control over anything I own. I won't even configure an account with Exchange's protocol, because that enables remote device wipe.

If an employer wants to issue me a company phone, that's fine. If an employer wants to enable IMAP, that's fine. Otherwise, I won't have mobile access to email, because the risk is unacceptable. And if that's not fine - well, it's been great talking with you, and I appreciate your time, but I'm afraid this position doesn't seem like a good fit after all.

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

#35

Post by throwanem » Sat, Feb 25, 2017, 1:16 PM UTC

asdfologist wrote: post #32

thewhitetulip wrote: post #9

Even in 2017, we are still not understanding that if you block something it becomes more exciting just for the fact that it was banned, ignore it and it'll die.

China's a counterexample. Their censorship efforts are pretty damn effective.

China's government has a degree of ubiquitous control that no Western company can hope to match.

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

#36

Post by throwanem » Sat, Feb 25, 2017, 1:17 PM UTC

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.

They didn't when I was in 6th grade, and that's now quite a few more than 16 years ago.

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

#37

Post by watwut » Sat, Feb 25, 2017, 1:31 PM UTC

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #17

cbanek wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like they have probably already started: https://twitter.com/susanthesquark/status/835193441814392833

This seems to be Uber's modus operandi every single time they're in trouble and it almost always seems to backfire on them, PR wise. I'm curious though, what tipped her off? While I've worked at tech start-ups before and can believe all the behavior she outlined (because I've seen similar things myself, it's very believable) it still bothers me to continue to take someone's word at face value. I mean I do, I would tr…

I find it fascinating that on one hand many people call what she described as standard and on the other people still call SV meritocracy. Even if you ignore sexism, the environment seemed to favor political maneuvring over skill and achievement.

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

#38

Post by lojack » Sat, Feb 25, 2017, 1:32 PM UTC

foepys wrote: post #25

Symbiote wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't use the app, but messages appear to be timestamped, that's probably enough to deanonymize many conversations.

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

#39

Post by hardlianotion » Sat, Feb 25, 2017, 1:43 PM UTC

k_sh wrote: post #4

> "Our activity at Uber has gone up 3x since they blocked us on their WiFi," Shin says. Streisand Effect in 3... 2... 1... It's 2017. Have we really not learned this lesson yet?

It's really not more surprising than the thought there are still new, well-funded and high profile companies that have seriously misguided ways of dealing with sexual harassment complaints.

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

#40

Post by beaconstudios » Sat, Feb 25, 2017, 2:15 PM UTC

watwut wrote: post #37

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems to be Uber's modus operandi every single time they're in trouble and it almost always seems to backfire on them, PR wise. I'm curious though, what tipped her off? While I've worked at tech start-ups before and can believe all the behavior she outlined (because I've seen similar things myself, it's very believable) it still bothers me to continue to take someone's word at face value. I mean I do, I would tr…

I find it fascinating that on one hand many people call what she described as standard and on the other people still call SV meritocracy. Even if you ignore sexism, the environment seemed to favor political maneuvring over skill and achievement.

I don't think a whole region can really be called a meritocracy - that strikes me as a pervasive myth. It would seem that meritocracy is something that a lot of SV companies strive for, but you'll always get companies that operate like Uber where meritocracy takes a back seat to politics and posturing.