Your Uber Tracking Device Is Now Active
medium.com
Your Uber Tracking Device Is Now Active
1–10 of 21 posts
Re: Your Uber Tracking Device Is Now Active
#2This is not possible if you have not granted Location Services access, due to the nature of how iOS works.
This only shows that a coordinate pair is being sent to the Uber API, which may have been cached from a time in the past, such as last time a ride was requested. The author counters this only by driving away in attempt to “reset” it, but instead of sniffing the traffic to see that the headers changed to reflect the new coordinates, they reached their conclusion by returning home and sniffing the traffic and saw that the coordinates remained the same.
For this to work as described, something in iOS would have to be incredibly broken.
Re: Your Uber Tracking Device Is Now Active
#3This is not possible if you have not granted Location Services access, due to the nature of how iOS works. This only shows that a coordinate pair is being sent to the Uber API, which may have been cached from a time in the past, such as last time a ride was requested. The author counters this only by driving away in attempt to “reset” it, but instead of sniffing the traffic to see that the headers changed to reflect…
I totally agree with you!!
Re: Your Uber Tracking Device Is Now Active
#4This is not possible if you have not granted Location Services access, due to the nature of how iOS works. This only shows that a coordinate pair is being sent to the Uber API, which may have been cached from a time in the past, such as last time a ride was requested. The author counters this only by driving away in attempt to “reset” it, but instead of sniffing the traffic to see that the headers changed to reflect…
He hasn't really done much to prove conclusively that it's not just coordinates associated with his wifi SSID.
> there is a red push pin right on top of literally the room I am sitting in in the house using Google Maps Satellite View.
why not step outside and try again, see if it moves. or is that room just where he spends most of his time with the phone location services turned on connected to wifi...?
Re: Your Uber Tracking Device Is Now Active
#5This is not possible if you have not granted Location Services access, due to the nature of how iOS works. This only shows that a coordinate pair is being sent to the Uber API, which may have been cached from a time in the past, such as last time a ride was requested. The author counters this only by driving away in attempt to “reset” it, but instead of sniffing the traffic to see that the headers changed to reflect…
He hasn't really done much to prove conclusively that it's not just coordinates associated with his wifi SSID. > there is a red push pin right on top of literally the room I am sitting in in the house using Google Maps Satellite View. why not step outside and try again, see if it moves. or is that room just where he spends most of his time with the phone location services turned on connected to wifi...?
Why would/should the Uber app try to associate SSIDs with coordinates?
Re: Your Uber Tracking Device Is Now Active
#6Earlier quoted context omitted.
He hasn't really done much to prove conclusively that it's not just coordinates associated with his wifi SSID. > there is a red push pin right on top of literally the room I am sitting in in the house using Google Maps Satellite View. why not step outside and try again, see if it moves. or is that room just where he spends most of his time with the phone location services turned on connected to wifi...?
Why would/should the Uber app try to associate SSIDs with coordinates?
For the exact scenario that the author is describing; attempting to ping your location while you've got your GPS switched off. I don't think it's a particularly uncommon practice.
Not saying it's likely, just something that he should probably attempt to disprove before declaring that the Uber app is sneakily using your GPS after you tell your phone to turn it off.
Re: Your Uber Tracking Device Is Now Active
#7The point isn’t how it gets the coordinates. It’s that the User disabled Location Services, which means that the User’s expectation (on Apple’s platform) is that the app will not locate the User, regardless of whether it theoretically can do so with GPS, WiFi, or a stellar sextant.
Re: Your Uber Tracking Device Is Now Active
#8I'm pretty sure the app can be pulling his coordinates from anycast GeoDNS or a number of other things. It's creepyish, but not that weird. It's a location based app, you told them not to use your GPS, they are probably going to use the other tools they have to make sure they can deliver the experience they want to.
I'm not saying it's right, just saying that it exists and everyone has a lot of down to the street location information about you all day.
Re: Your Uber Tracking Device Is Now Active
#9This is not possible if you have not granted Location Services access, due to the nature of how iOS works. This only shows that a coordinate pair is being sent to the Uber API, which may have been cached from a time in the past, such as last time a ride was requested. The author counters this only by driving away in attempt to “reset” it, but instead of sniffing the traffic to see that the headers changed to reflect…
He hasn't really done much to prove conclusively that it's not just coordinates associated with his wifi SSID. > there is a red push pin right on top of literally the room I am sitting in in the house using Google Maps Satellite View. why not step outside and try again, see if it moves. or is that room just where he spends most of his time with the phone location services turned on connected to wifi...?
>coordinates associated with his wifi SSID.
I don't believe there's a public API for this on iOS. In order to use wifi hotspots to assist with GPS on iOS, you'd have to have location services enabled for the app.
That being said, it's very possible the app is just holding onto the last coordinates it was able to receive when location services was enabled for the app. This may be the default sane behavior to allow it to boot faster, as it'll be able to show/use the previously cached location to load maps, rather than waiting for a GPS fix to be acquired.
The author's test case of booting waze at a different location and then seeing if uber picks up that location after traveling away from it, without booting up the app is probably bogus, as unless granted, uber does not have access to location in background, and thus will not be able to access new location data while the app is not running. Once location services is disabled again, and the app is booted, the app should not see the previous location a GPS fix was able to be acquired (as that would break the implicit guarantee that an app using location services w/o background permissions should only see where you are currently, and not where you have been).
It's my suspicion this data is probably not directly used, and rather is used to enrich analytic events emitted internally within uber.
Re: Your Uber Tracking Device Is Now Active
#10“So I managed to get something working this afternoon on my own iPhone which isn’t Jailbroken, including a functioning bypass of the certificate pinning protections included in the most recent Uber app running on iOS.”
Does anyone know the method for doing this? 1) without jailbreaking and 2) bypassing certificate pinning on iOS.