Uber is tracking my battery status, all the time | Hacker News Reader

Uber is tracking my battery status, all the time

26 pointspunnerud21 comments

I looked into the HTTPS-trafic from the Uber-app (with MITMproxy) and it is one of the few apps I have found

that is sending my battery and charging status on a regular basis:

          "battery_status": "unplugged",
          "battery_level": 0.73,

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They have a good argument for doing so...

http://thenextweb.com/insider/2016/05/20/uber-riders-will-pa...

A similar article was posted here a few days ago.

That is not a good argument at all. It's a side-effect of collecting metrics. Uber has no reason to know the battery status of my phone--them knowing it will not help them improve service to me in any way.

That is not a good argument. That is an asshole invasion of user privacy.

Sorry, I meant that in a sarcastic way

Ah, my apologies. I'm so used to seeing people actually making these arguments.

> Chen promises that Uber does not use this information to pry you to pay surge

You're a bit to quick on the "asshole invasion of privacy".

> .. which sounds like a relief if that’s to be believed.

Maybe.

Even so, it is not related to privacy is it?

There we go, there's the person actually defending them. Nope, I'm not too quick; Uber's a scummy company and this is a blatant invasion of privacy.

No I'm just saying it can be a case of e.g. "don't attribute to malice what can be attributed to stupidity".

if you see a person who is dying of thirst you do not jack the price of $1 dollar a bottle to $2 just because you know they are thirsty.

this business practice is unbelievable that it is even legal.

All I said was that they claim NOT to do this within the article.

weird, thats what I'm reading from the article in the link in parent. --> "Chen says users will pay up to 9.9 times in surge if their battery is critical just so they’re not stranded wherever they are (of course, assuming that your driver doesn’t cancel on you after your phone’s dead.)"

It is possible this has happened naturally, say after some big festival or event where 1000s of people call uber at the same time. Or surveys perhaps.

This is what I am talking about

> Chen promises that Uber does not use this information to pry you to pay surge, which sounds like a relief if that’s to be believed.

Because this quote is directly saying they don't do it. While your quote doesn't.

I use m.uber.com - I am almost certain it does not have this permissions ability. Bonus: it works on desktop too.

On Android (both Android Browser and Chrome), battery information is accessible. http://caniuse.com/#feat=battery-status

I believe there's a similar option for iOS Safari, but I can't find it immediately.

I've just read today somewhere that if your battery is runing low, the higher fees you are likely to pay for services like Uber. Do you get why? Think for a moment before reading the answer... ... ... Because how could you order a cheap taxi when your battery is dead. You have an urgency and someone wants to profit from it. Like those who sell food in the airport. Like that locksmith who overcharges you if you lock yourself in, and so on..

I'm wondering if the higher rate also reflects a higher no-show risk.

I mean, you send the car there but cannot load it an cannot contact the client.

Does it work like loan classification? Higher risk get higher rates to compensate defaults/no-shows?

> Do you get why? Think for a moment before reading the answer

This made it seems like the answer was supposed to be strange. It seems obvious that people are willing to pay more in such situations.

Possibly being used to track battery usage by the app, so that they can provide a better experience for users.

How in the world could they tease out the amount of battery their app is using?

By monitoring proxies for battery usage: CPU time, amount of time location services is on, etc. and building a model. It's not an easy problem, but for an app that is widely used such as Uber, it's not infeasible to attempt.

Uber does claim that they use it to switch to a low-power mode

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