Yeah, after being a "dozen rides a week" Uber user for the last year, I switched to Lyft. There is just no reason for this.
How do you know Lyft doesn't do that? Any blogpost, article would be helpful. Thanks.
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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
#62Why do we accept this intrusion into our lives?
I accept it because I don't really care if Uber knows where I am for a couple of minutes after they drop me off. Not everyone's cup of tea, but if you don't like it there's nothing stopping you from uninstalling the app.
The issue then becomes Uber is doing it so all the other ride hailing apps start doing it.
This is how the Overton Window shifts, and how our right to privacy is rapidly eroded.
Re: Uber Now Tracks Passengers’ Locations Even After They’re Dropped Off
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do you know Lyft doesn't do that? Any blogpost, article would be helpful. Thanks.
> How do you know Lyft doesn't do that? They let me not let them. Lyft lets me tell iOS to share my location with it only "while using the app". Uber used to do this. But now that option has disappeared--it's only "always" or "never".
Waze doesn't allow "while using the app" either making it unusable unless you give it unfettered access to your location at all times.
Re: Uber Now Tracks Passengers’ Locations Even After They’re Dropped Off
#64I had to restore my iPhone from a week old backup in order to get the previous Uber version back. It's a shame there's no easier way to downgrade an app on iOS.
Re: Uber Now Tracks Passengers’ Locations Even After They’re Dropped Off
#65I 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.
If you kill an app on the iOS, it stays dead until you launch it again, iirc.
it stays dead until the system decides to reload it. It may decide to do this for various reasons such a entering a geofence, significant location update, or push notification. But turning off background app refresh should prevent all of these things from turning on your app I think.
Also low power mode can also be used as a sort of incognito mode because it stops all background activity to preserve battery.
Re: Uber Now Tracks Passengers’ Locations Even After They’re Dropped Off
#66While their explanation is reasonable, I have little reason to trust a company that settled an investigation specifically about location tracking abuse . I've pretty much dropped their app and switched to their mobile site, which is bound to my browser's location settings. Additionally I'll only use them if they're significantly cheaper than lyft from now on.
> While their explanation is reasonable
Their explanation is illogical:
> Previously, Uber only collected data from the user if the rider had the application open. Now, if a rider calls for an Uber and closes the app, Uber says it will continue to collect location data up until five minutes after the ride ends. That means Uber can see where you end up after you leave the car.
That's the change; the reasoning for this change?
> Uber hopes to eliminate the most frustrating part of the experience: the game of phone tag that both the rider and driver play when trying to coordinate the pickup spot.
That, of course, doesn't occur in the five minutes after I get out of the car. They of course mention more generically,
> "We do this to improve pickups, drop-offs, customer service, and to enhance safety," Uber says on its website.
But that's not really enlightening … and not a convincing reason for having it persist beyond the app being open.
Re: Uber Now Tracks Passengers’ Locations Even After They’re Dropped Off
#67This is the perfect example of development for the sake of development. The new user experience is terrible and provides the user with zero extra benefits. I seriously can't see how a product manager signs off on these updates.
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.
Re: Uber Now Tracks Passengers’ Locations Even After They’re Dropped Off
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do you know Lyft doesn't do that? Any blogpost, article would be helpful. Thanks.
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 use the app, Lyft for some reason just wasn't working - their auth service seemed to be broken. I ended up downloading Uber and signing up because I had to get somewhere in a hurry and didn't have the time to look up another rideshare service. Their text notifications about driver arrivals are also always off, on the order of up to a minute or two (I don't know if Uber is better, but I would assume it is.)
FWIW, I'd also sunk something like $300 into Lyft rides just two weeks before that for business travel, and I didn't experience a problem once.
Re: Uber Now Tracks Passengers’ Locations Even After They’re Dropped Off
#69"Uber collects your location data from the time of trip request through five minutes after the trip ends, including when the app is in the background." From source listed in the article: https://help.uber.com/h/ba9dd342-158d-421f-a9ea-0e6c7aaad726
"The website “ https://help.uber.com” would like to use your current location."
I think its pretty relevant if someone is looking for uber help that they could use the location to help narrow down who should be dealing with the issue...
Re: Uber Now Tracks Passengers’ Locations Even After They’re Dropped Off
#70I 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 install Greenify to do exactly this. It helped me kill some pernicious apps that I needed once in a while but that would run all the time, killing my battery (I'm looking at you, Mi Fit).
The only annoying and inexplicable thing is that some apps run their own background process for push notifications, rather than using GCM, so pushes stop coming in if you kill those.