Uber Now Tracks Passengers’ Locations Even After They’re Dropped Off | Hacker News Reader

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

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812 pointsdoctorshady481 comments

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 know where I was picked up and where I'm going, why do they need to know where I'm at after I get dropped off? That's a little intrusive to me. The proposed argument in the article, "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," is fine and I'd accept that even though I'm extremely wary of apps that have access to my GPS data while I'n not using the app because I can't see it in fine detail (as far as I know you only can see that some app is accessing your GPS currently, not which one(s) exactly). However, Uber has no need for the data after I am finished. I'm not a fan of being tracked in general, by governments or otherwise, but for a private company to request data after I finish using their services is intrusive and maybe this is conspiracy but I wouldn't be surprised if this data is sent real time and it's possible to see where a user is at any given time after they leave the car (during that 5 minute window).

I'm also curious how this will bump up against EU privacy laws. I'm in the states and this may only be enabled for certain markets, but I wonder if this would cause issues in EU if it's enabled there.

It's to analyse where riders actually go after being dropped off; for example understanding that if you want to go to building XYZ you have to get off here.

Collecting data for self driving cars probably.

Yeah, but why does Uber need/care about that information? If I ask to be dropped off at X and walk a couple blocks to Y, Uber shouldn't care. I can understand the argument that maybe going to certain buildings you have to be dropped off at a specific spot, but that seems like a minor gain for something that's more than just a minor intrusion.

They don't need the information.

They care because they are data driven and not personally culpable for their invasions of privacy. Why not collect everything you can without getting more permissions?

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 against rockets.

Doubly so for the "ME TOO!" Doordash / Postmates competitor.

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...

You seem to be implying that they are violating privacy just for the heck of it. That's ignoring the very obvious value (even to customers) of this specific type of data. As the other commenter mentioned, knowing where humans choose to be dropped off when heading to a specific location is of obvious value.

> You seem to be implying that they are violating privacy just for the heck of it.

Why not both? Why not collect all the information you possibly can, whether or not you immediately see obvious value to it, and then find ways to justify it later?

> Why not collect all the information you possibly can, whether or not you immediately see obvious value to it, and then find ways to justify it later?

Because it's non-trivial and it costs a lot of money to do that, in terms of engineers' salaries, storage, etc.

> it costs a lot of money to do that

Well they _have_ raised $15,000,000,000 in cash: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/21/business/dealbook/why-uber...

Well-run companies don't waste money just because they are flush with cash -- especially not when that cash represents board members who want their investment to pay off, not be frittered away on something with no business value.

I'm not claiming that they don't collect as much data as possible including data with no immediate use. Perhaps they do. I don't know. I'm claiming that this instance does not appear to demonstrate them doing so.

(Uber engineer here)

The data is used for (or can be used for) a number of practical and important purposes. These are some examples of what we do as well as what we could do with such data:

- Fighting fraud

- Improving "suggested pickup" locations

- Improvements around POOL (we'd rather suggest a location that's easy to pick up from than one that's unsafe)

- Figuring out what side of the street you end up on (we can do a better job of choosing a route if we know you're able to get out of the car safely)

- Optimizing pickups and dropoffs around events or certain times of the day or week (Caltrain riders: imagine if we suggested pickups at 5th and Townsend instead of 4th and King during rush hour. Much easier to find your driver and prevents congestion)

- Dropping riders off closer to the "correct" entrance to their building

- Dropping riders off in a location that's easier for the driver to depart from without making the rider walk too far (e.g., instead of getting trapped in a weird road or parking lot)

- Analyze where riders ask drivers to make stops mid-trip and make better experiences around that.

As far as trust and safety goes, we can avoid charging you if your driver was looking for you at the wrong location and gave up. We can better see where you were actually dropped off at, if your driver lies and leaves the app running after you've left the car. Leave your phone in the driver's car, and we can potentially do more than just put you in touch with them.

Individual users' data is very closely guarded internally. It's immensely difficult to look at user data without specific access. Overwhelmingly, this data is queried in aggregate and fed into machine learning systems. The risk of abuse is exceptionally low.

> Individual users' data is very closely guarded internally. It's immensely difficult to look at user data without specific access. Overwhelmingly, this data is queried in aggregate and fed into machine learning systems. The risk of abuse is exceptionally low.

But so you're saying it's possible? Somebody with high enough access at Uber might be able to stalk an ex-girlfriend and follow her home? Getting into trouble for it of course, but it wouldn't matter after a murder-suicide? Statistically improbable I know, but that's the sort of thing that people worry about

> But so you're saying it's possible?

People with access to hardware can probably do anything if they really want to. People at the bank can remove all your money in the account by going directly into the database as well.

If data exists inside an organization, it is always, by definition, possible that someone can abuse it.

I mean, at the end of the day, there's someone that can SSH into some server if they were really determined. There's logging and auditing that happens, though, so you'd almost certainly get caught. Could you craft some sort of perfect crime to avoid detection? It would be super hard, but there's no universe with perfectly secure software. It's a big system, and there are thousands of moving parts, and the likelihood of you actually getting very far is insanely low.

But that's the same story with that one engineer at Google that has SSH access to the server with the keys to the storage cluster for Gmail. Or the person that writes queries for the Hive cluster that manages Cortana queries at Microsoft. Or the person that writes the API layer that sits in front of the order history service at Amazon.

There's a million ways an engineer at any big company could abuse their powers. But we put safeguards in place, we watch each other, and we do our best to serve our users as best we can. I say this in a general sense, not specifically to Uber. It comes down to trust.

> I say this in a general sense, not specifically to Uber. It comes down to trust.

Yeah, I suppose this is true. Thanks for sharing your thoughts, I appreciate it.

> there's no universe with perfectly secure software

This is why it's important to minimize the attack surface. Yes, there is always going to be risk when you store tracking data. You are choosing to create that risk by storing any data beyond what is specifically necessary. Uses such as "Optimizing pickups and dropoffs" are optional, which you more or less admit when you said it was something "we could do".

Alternatively, you could prioritize the safety of your customers by minimizing the risks they acquire when they use your service. The data collected for the ride could be minimized. You could expunge user data when it is no longer needed. You could find ways to store only aggregate data instead per-user values.

> we put safeguards in place

You also made design and business decisions that created the need for those safeguards. You are protecting your users from a problem that you created.

edit:

> we do our best to serve our users as best we can

You could be indemnifying you users for any damages that derive from the data you are choosing to store.

I don't want to sound like I'm disagreeing with you, but I want to raise some important points. Collecting too much data is definitely a bad thing. But there are things to consider:

> You are choosing to create that risk by storing any data beyond what is specifically necessary.

That's an interesting point and it begs that question of what is "necessary". Does that mean a company should distill its product down the the absolute minimum viable product without collecting any information beyond what is necessary to do its job? Nobody should use Google Analytics because it's not necessary to run a website? "Necessary" isn't black and white.

Pickups and dropoffs are very troublesome parts of an Uber ride (and definitely can't be avoided...the riders need to get in and out of the car without being run over). Uber currently has no way of improving that, without data at least. So what data is "necessary" to make that experience better? How can Uber, or any for-profit company, improve their product if they have no idea what's wrong with it? What kind of data can be collected that falls into the bucket of "necessary"?

> You could expunge user data when it is no longer needed.

Other than when a user leaves the service, how do you know when data is no longer "needed"? How can trends be measured over time if old data is expunged? How can fraud trends be detected if historical payment data is not preserved? How can Uber choose the best restaurants for UberEATS if order history is dropped over time?

When a user leaves a service for a time and returns, do they return to find a completely empty account? Would you expect this from Gmail, or Facebook?

At what point do you draw the line where you say, "I'm sure we'll never need this again."?

> You could find ways to store only aggregate data instead per-user values.

This assumes the data is homogeneous, which it's not. Different people use Uber (and any other service, for that matter) in different ways. Lumping everything together makes it impossible to discern patterns that are substantial but do not represent a majority of your user base: Some folks only ride to and from work. Some folks only ride to and from bars. Some folks only ever use Uber to go to the airport. How do you identify and optimize for these use cases?

It also calls into question how you bucket your data. Location data in California is not relevant to location data in New York. Location data in Rochester is not relevant to location data in New York City. Location data in Brooklyn is not very relevant to location data in Manhattan. At what point do you stop scrubbing your data into an aggregate form? How do you avoid scrubbing too much data away such that you've painted yourself into a corner when you try to solve a problem in the future? How do you avoid scrubbing too little, such that even when the UUIDs are stripped away you can use a big ol' hadoop job against pickup and dropoff locations to figure out which trips belong to which user?

It's worth asking also how much value you can provide to the user if you do all of these things. When I go home for the holidays once a year, I take Uber quite a lot. Should Uber forget my favorite destinations every year because the data gets expunged? Should it only show common destinations because my trip history has been anonymized?

Anyway, this is meant to point out that it's not simply a matter of keeping things as minimal as possible. It's hard to add value while also protecting users, even when the users' best interests are in mind.

"Just because you can, doesn't mean that you should."

I think people could be picked up and dropped off just fine prior to this update so it's not something fundamentally broken. Could things be improved? Sure but the benefits need to be weighed vs. the tradeoff.

Given the many responses that you have gotten so far arguing against your stance, it might be helpful to consider why people are having such a reaction. We have valid concerns and they should be addressed.

Firstly, I just want to take the opportunity to thank you for sticking around and taking part in the conversation. While my own thoughts lie mostly with the other respondents in this thread, it's critical that we have channels somewhere in-between "press release" and "Wikileaks" for getting some insight into the workings of companies like Uber.

Having said all that, it's still creepy. And the examples you gave (Google/Gmail, Microsoft/Cortana) are almost certainly also instances where data collected is being systematically used in what many would consider creepy ways.

I don't want to sound like I'm minimizing the issue, when I say this, because I respect the sentiments expressed here greatly. But there's a very strong stigma around collection of location data, more so than other forms of more sensitive information. Almost every credit card company, bank, insurance company, and more share your every purchase. What you buy, what you eat, how you live. As far as the sensitivity of data goes, location data is serious, but far less serious compared to things that people are mostly okay with.

For me, I go to and from home, the gym, and work. Every day. If someone was looking at that data, I'd be creeped out, but they'd learn almost nothing about me. If someone saw my credit card statements, I'd be mortified. And yet, almost everyone forgets to fill out and mail back that little slip you get with a new credit card that says "hey, actually I don't want you to sell all of my data to everyone on the planet."

> For me, I go to and from home, the gym, and work. Every day. If someone was looking at that data, I'd be creeped out, but they'd learn almost nothing about me.

Ha, this sounds exactly like "I have nothing to hide, so I'm okay with the NSA gathering all of my data".

Some people do have things to hide: they are having affairs, visiting prostitutes, going to Planned Parenthood to have an abortion, going to a cancer center to get treatment,...

I'd suggest you read https://www.wired.com/2013/03/anonymous-phone-location-data/ if you have not previously seen this.

Part of the issue is that location has a lot more "physicality" tied to it. One can't easily change where they live, work etc. whereas it's much easier to switch credit cards.

A person who knows what they're doing can stalk 50 different ways. Saying that it's worth giving up all the improvements this can make to make that impossible through just this one venue is frankly ridiculous.

> Saying that it's worth giving up all the improvements this can make to make that impossible through just this one venue is frankly ridiculous.

It certainly is; it's also something I've never said

The data is used for (or can be used for) a number of practical and important purposes.

so.. uh.. (eyebrow wag) what else do you use it for that you didn't enumerate?

The risk of abuse is exceptionally low.

Except, of course, events where you and I disagree about what abuse is. Like tracking journalists around for shits and giggles.

Or a romantic interest. Or any one of a million other reasons. Because no one has ever abused a massive trove of data for such trivial reasons before...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOVEINT

Yeah, it's not also as if the government (or another government, as Uber is worldwide) can't also take hold of the Uber data...

It's a tough one -- I want to be able to opt out, but I still want Uber to drop me off at the front desk not the mailing address... based on knowing that 90% of other users had to walk the same 100 meters immediately.

Then drag the pin a bit further, or even crazier, say "hey can you drop me over there?"

Thanks for being open and sharing. This all seems really reasonable to me.

Your haughty attitude toward privacy is really chilling. If Uber hasn't received a NSL [1] I would be astounded, and your employer doesn't have a great track record [2]. Please think hard about the world you are helping to create.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter

[2] http://www.buzzfeed.com/johanabhuiyan/uber-is-investigating-...

You missed my point. I said that if we accidentally started collecting all user locations, you wouldn't have to worry about us getting an NSL because our servers would have crashed and burned and no data would have managed to have been collected. Uber's infrastructure is completely incapable of handling that volume of data, because it was never designed to handle it. As far as software bugs go, accidentally collecting all user locations always would be a disastrous one for Uber, not for user privacy.

Have we gotten an NSL? I don't know, but I'd guess we probably have. It would be foolish to think otherwise.

> Uber's infrastructure is completely incapable of handling that volume of data, because it was never designed to handle it.

That is completely irrelevant. The powers that be can siphon off the data as it comes in. The danger is in receiving excess data in the first place, making yourself a more enticing target for collection activities.

That Uber could have a bug that sends all location data is irrelevant. Google, Apple, Lyft, Yelp, Foursquare, Microsoft, or any other company that has any app that accesses and transmits location data could have an identical bug that presents an identical problem, and Google and Apple already regularly collect and transmit that data all the time without it being a bug. And being a bug of biblical proportions, it'll get resolved very, very quickly because it would be causing a hugely expensive outage.

Uber also only uses strong TLS for connections, so "the powers that be" will have a heck of a time taking a real heap of gigabits (terabits?) per second of encrypted data and doing anything particularly useful with it.

I'm convinced!

Does uber offer a password/bank information storage service?

With such great security and unhackable storage, those are the next logical upgrade and would make a really great one-stop service for your customers.

No, Uber internally uses OneLogin with mandatory 2FA.

> 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 month. And 20 million / (5 * 60) = 67k events per second.

I could probably build out the infrastructure to process and store a year's worth of user location data for 20k a year on AWS.

Being a bug, though, it would record with the fidelity of the Uber app. Which is a lot more than every five minutes.

It's not a bug I'm concerned about, it's this part of the privacy policy "if you permit the Uber app to access location services through the permission system used by your mobile operating system (“platform”), we may also collect the precise location of your device when the app is running in the foreground or background"

What I'm getting at is that it's pretty straightforward and easy for Uber to maintain a database of every user's locations at all times, even if they aren't active users. This kind of data is valuable. Assuming Uber isn't already doing it, all it takes is one mid-level product manager to initiate a small project to kickstart it.

You're not doing yourself any favors here. People say they don't trust your company because of past behavior of the company itself and history of even ethical companies being bought or changing priorities, and you just keep pushing me further and further toward Lyft or my bike.

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.

If NSLs are included under its "national security" category, Uber said it has not received any such requests at the time of its last Transparency Report. https://transparencyreport.uber.com

Thanks for the insight into what you (may) actually do with the data! There are so many companies demanding intrusive amounts of personal data that it's easy to become cynical.

All of the points that you've listed here would work just as well with anonymized data. Obviously if users are being picked up or dropped off at their house (for instance) then making every journey truly anonymous would be impossible without damaging the data, but you could still strip out explicitly identifying metadata. Are you able to tell us what sort of measures are taken in this regard?

> Are you able to tell us what sort of measures are taken in this regard?

I don't work on this stuff myself, so I can't say.

>> The risk of abuse is exceptionally low.

I call bullshit. This coming from the same guys who were mapping one night stands using ride data? What were you guys studying there. Fornicating habits of young adults in large metropolitans?

http://www.whosdrivingyou.org/blog/ubers-deleted-rides-of-gl...

I almost forgot about the time you guys were tracking journalists.

Uber has a reputation and history of being a "shady" company.

> 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.

Would you be willing to share information about what % of Uber's revenue is accrued from monetizing user information?

EDIT: BTW, did you hear from your support that there are users who aren't pleased with the new feature?

> I'm not going to try to defend our reputation [as a shady company].

Someone well above your pay grade probably should. As far as I can tell, Uber's business model is psychopathic levels of regulatory and psychological arbitrage.

What is "psychological arbitrage"?

Stuff like Uber figured out they could charge people more when their battery was low.

So that study is their business model?

> things are locked down _pretty damn tight_ around sensitive data

Commenting, to save this little gem for the inevitable time when Uber gets hacked. Again.

Remember that not all hacks are made public.

Maybe he means the next inevitable public hack.

The whole point is that you are providing an all or nothing choice for no good reason. Why do you FORCE that instead of letting the user choose to allow location while using the app?

>But it's worth saying that things are locked down _pretty damn tight_ around sensitive data.

Which means absolutely nothing as an assurance. Even if that's the case today, in 5 or 10 years the company could go down, or change CEO and be all about exploiting the data, or selling it to advertisers or whatever. Or it could just be a hack that releases millions of ride information (it has happened to the best of web services).

That's the problem when you store data, making whether you have some "pretty damn tight locks" in place irrelevant.

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.

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

You see. You imagine. You believe. You are told. You do not know. And even if it were so today it would not have to be that way tomorrow. So even todays security isn't enough of a reassurance.

The only secure data is data never collected in the first place. And until the friggin disruptive startups start to recognize this I will try to not support them in making my data more insecure.

I don't want to disrespect you personally, but why should I trust Uber? Today it's locked down, tomorrow it's not. Is there anything protecting me?

Has there been an independent third party audit of Uber's internal data security? Or do we just have to take Uber's word on it?

There are two sides to this.

One is where we believe, based on your words (or some random person on the Internet who claims to be an employee), Uber employees are restricted from accessing customer data...you know, like LOVINT in the NSA. [1]

The second is where we believe, based on your words (and associated caveats), that Uber does not have a firehose feeding all this information to some other entity that has a much larger capacity for "machine learning", has far lesser actual oversight than what you claim to be in place in Uber, and uses that data for many things we don't know the impact of. This point might sound like I'm talking only about the NSA and trust in the U.S. government, but keep in mind that Uber operates in many countries, and all of their governments have an interest in gaining such data and using it for their own purposes.

Post Snowden, neither of these sides look harmless. I'm talking about the world society as a whole, not just about what one person may consider ("nothing to hide") or what negative experiences that some people may never go through in life.

[1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2013/08/24...

Looks to me that even the most specific information in that article is aggregate data over a large number of users, i.e. population statistics, something I wouldn't consider a breach of anyone's privacy.

This just came out today.

"Uber said it protects you from spying. Security sources say otherwise"

https://www.revealnews.org/article/uber-said-it-protects-you...

I'd ask bastawhiz to comment given his comments above.

> The risk of abuse is exceptionally low.

But there's no oversight whatsoever. We should just take Uber's word for that -- despite the company's public track record of repeated privacy violations in the past?

And even if Uber itself has suddenly converted into an unimpeachable guardian of personal privacy, it could always be hacked (and probably already has, just like the NSA and everyone else.) The hackers are not likely to share the same moral compunctions about privacy.

So a follow up question: which is that data used for and which could it be used for currently, and what's planned?

I also noticed you said that it's queried in aggregate, but that is distinct from it living in aggregate. Does this mean that you actually do keep my individual GPS data and it could be looked up later?

I am still unconvinced that this is necessary, even with those (potential) improvements. I am relatively okay with allowing Uber access to my location outside of the app during the period between me requesting a ride and being picked up, and of course I'm okay with allowing access when I'm physically in the car. But after I get dropped off is a much harder thing to accept. Most of the things you suggested were for before I get picked up, not after. In fact, the only things you suggested were not on that bullet list but in the second to last paragraph ("we can avoid charging you if your driver was looking for you at the wrong location and gave up"; "We can better see where you were actually dropped off at, if your driver lies and leaves the app running after you've left the car").

I understand that Uber itself is trying to be a better company and is trying to move beyond its past life as a cavalier company that suggested looking up information about journalists who write negative things about the company, but it's a really hard image to shake and understandably many people are distrustful of a company whose executives were okay with this. I could very much see a member of Uber's counsel requesting GPS data on some user who filed a lawsuit and giving it to a private investigator (considering that Uber did in fact request information about and that a PI to do investigation into a person who filed a lawsuit against Kalanick).

> which is that data used for and which could it be used for currently, and what's planned?

I don't know specific programs that are in place or upcoming, not my jam.

> Does this mean that you actually do keep my individual GPS data and it could be looked up later?

Trip location data is attached to users. You can look it up yourself on the Uber website (riders.uber.com). With regard to data collected from rider devices, I don't know the technical details but I assume it's not living in aggregate.

At the end of the day, we're an engineering- and data-driven company. Pickups and dropoffs are overwhelmingly the most painful parts of the average Uber ride, and we know startlingly little about them: that's what this initiative is about. We want to make things better for our users, and overwhelmingly, things like this do lead to improvements. Whether you trust what we do with the five minutes of data is up to you. I'm not here to speak about our character, though I certainly wouldn't be around if I thought Uber is a bad company.

Also, why isn't there an option to delete previous trip data?

If Uber was really serious about user privacy, this would be a no brainer feature to offer.

It's not just your trip data, it's also your driver's. It would be wrong to allow you to delete the record of the trip.

It's also the case that the record of your trip isn't just data. It's the receipt for an actual thing that happened. A transaction between three or more parties takes place. That data needs to be preserved for any number of the reasons, including government compliance. Even just handling credit card disputes makes it invaluable.

I don't buy that at all. Location data certainly is not recorded for (most) taxi rides today.

A receipt is the piece of paper or electronic record showing how much your trip cost.

Show me an example of someone using trip data as a primary form for handling CC dispute. Please also back up your statement that trip data has to be kept forever for government compliance.

Lastly, what if my driver and I both want to delete trip data? Per your argument, is there an existing option to delete trip data then? I didn't think so.

If one side deletes the trip data, you can anonymise it, destroying all possible references to that user ID. The driver still has his history.

A receipt is a proof of transaction and completely separate from whatever data you collected about your customers, your statement makes little sense. That it facilitates disputes doesn't change the nature of data privacy, it is just convenient for you and the bank.

  Also, why isn't there an option to delete previous trip data?

Uber has your data even if you delete your account. I'm not sure if they can be convinced into deleting it, but they don't do that by default.

Problem is that a lot of people don't trust Uber :)

Why can't you let the feature be opt-in?

Your iOS app effectively turns useless when choosing "Never". You can't do anything other than booking a cab. No access to account information, ride information, anything else.

----

Yeah, I get what it is when you say:

  Improving "suggested pickup" locations

If your app watches me 24x7, then it'd be able to predict pickup locations better. Good job. It can't get creepier.

In fairness you can access the app, it's just the little hamburger icon is grayed out making it seem like you can't access it. I was able to click it just fine even with the "ENABLE GPS" overlay.

Suggested pickup locations are a feature we have in SF:

https://techcrunch.com/2015/07/08/uber-suggested-pickup-poin...

All it does is help you pick spots near your pickup location that are more easily accessible to drivers.

This has to be a goldmine for divorce lawyers.

For now. You haven't mentioned how long this data is kept, which means I can assume "forever". This means that a future change of policy, an acquisition, or a merger can expose this data to a variety of third parties (not to mention the obvious possible exposure to governments).

The reasons you have listed for gathering the data are not sufficient to offset the future risk to me. Moreover why should I do unpaid data acquisition for Uber while bearing all the risk in case the data is exposed? If you want higher detail location information, do what Google did and send out cars with sensors.

> If you want higher detail location information, do what Google did and send out cars with sensors.

It's not just about the locations, but about the interactions between the rider(s), driver, the location, and the time. A location might be difficult to pull over at during rush hour, but nearly empty later on. Drivers might be unable to get very close to an event venue. Certain streets might be difficult to drop passengers off safely on, based on traffic conditions (though we wouldn't know that). And of course, there are many applications around customer support that couldn't be solved otherwise.

Can individual users get access to their own data? Can they take this data with them, similar to Google's takeout?

Check out riders.uber.com

It is impossible to take your word for it. After so, so many companies have been caught intentionally or unintentionally mishandling user data, there is no reason to believe that Uber is the exception.

An extraordinary claim demands extraordinary proof.

> It is impossible to take your word for it.

I'm not asking you to. If you'd like to come in and interview for a position and eventually see for yourself, though, I'm happy to accept your résumé. :)

jesus, what a bad answer. nice bribe joke amid allegations of unethical behavior.

None of these use cases demand "always" to be the only choice, with no way to choose "while using".

Your company is grossly overstepping privacy bounds, and your excuse making post is largely irrelevant. And it's wholly reasonable to be distrustful of a place where execs threaten to blackmail journalists and remain employed. It'd be ridiculous to trust Uber.

All of the examples presented seem like they could be approximated pretty well by tracking only up the the point of drop-off, but tracking location and person history. And there are a lot of unintended consequences available along with the example use cases in watching for five minutes after drop-off. How carefully data is kept only lowers the probability of breach or misuse. Only not keeping data zeroes out the probability of breach or misuse.

If you can't see the potential for abuse then you need to take a step back and look at things in a different perspective. There is a very real possibility that Uber could be hacked in the future, or has already been hacked. Can Ubers infrastructure withstand an Operation Aurora level attack?

Right! Now that we know you are engineer, you can just as well go to your PM and tell him that people do not like this. I have permanently disabled UBER on my device, and will turn it on only and if ever use Uber again. Big step back for the privacy, and many people I know like the traditional cabs because of that. I don't know what you do guys, but recently, uber is becoming an uber bloat. Messy UI, bugs everywhere, shady taxes because driver can't find me (?!?!?), also when I dispute my money, they go to my account and not on my debit card, from where they are stolen from! Yeah, I am pretty pissed. Won't use uber anytime soon. Edit: Oh, and one more thing. Start writing release notes, as the normal apps and people do!

Why not just bring back the "while using only" if only to back up your claim that there is nothing nefarious going on.

Giving people choice is good.

Honestly, none of the examples you gave above is good enough for me to give me location information to Uber (or any other company). I'm sure you have the best of intentions as an engineer to improve your service (and so do your co-workers), but I (and a lot of others) don't trust any company with sensitive personal data.

I can understand if you gave the "Always" option in addition to the "While Using" option with this explanation, but strong arming your users to give an all or nothing choice is bad.

For all this safety shit you're talking about, does that mean if I get dropped off in an unsafe manner or unsafe area, I can now sue Uber if I get hurt. Seems like if you're making all these efforts, you're making a promise of warranty that my entire trip is safe, even after I open the car door and step out into traffic.

You already had that information. I doubt most users switch away from the uber app the instant they leave the car, so the "while using" permissions would allow you to collect all of that.

I also doubt that Uber as a company, and Uber engineers individually, hadn't realized that already.

I'm going to deny permission, and call Uber from Apple maps. No reason for you to track me from M-F if I only use Uber Sa-Su.

Great! Why not allow people to opt out of the enhanced location gathering? I'll continue the old fashioned way of telling my driver where I want to go, and retain my small shred of privacy. People who are unable to navigate the big scary world by themselves can allow Uber to collect data and drop them off where they want to go.

Just let me opt out.

Well it's the same company that creepily gives me a code interview in the app because it knows I go to a software company couple of times a week and pushes a job ad.

Uber has a lot of sensitive information regarding users. Who goes where and when. This in the wrong hand can be very disastrous. E.g Trump to Uber: "gimme list of all people who to to mosques frequently. No tax for you." Uber: "Here you go. Just don't tell anyone. "

While I love this scenario from a "Trump could abuse his power" narrative, have there been any recorded cases of businesses in America getting "Secret" tax breaks? Seems like it'd be pretty hard to pull off with the IRS.

Sure, maybe they "Bundled" that data it in to some ~other~ lobbied tax deal, but I'd imagine someone would whistle blow that pretty quick in this post-snowden world?

>> Seems like it'd be pretty hard to pull off with the IRS.

Unless the IRS itself is the instrument of abuse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS_targeting_controversy

> have there been any recorded cases of businesses in America getting "Secret" tax breaks?

The tax law itself isn't secret, but companies certainly lobby for and receive tax breaks and other benefits passed openly by Congress. That's what lobbying is about, of course.

Post-snowden? We all know about it but the power abuse still happens.

Code interview in the app? What do you mean?

first search result: http://www.businessinsider.com/uber-recruiting-engineers-thr...

No tax break needed.

You do know that your phone company already has that info, right?

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.

Abuse of power is a serious problem. It's hard to imagine that more regulation would stop bad actors like that judge, since he's already breaking the law.

I can't think of a way to keep privacy technologically without sacrificing the modern conveniences I very much appreciate. Uber in particular has dramatically improved my lifestyle. Google Maps as well.

Experiments like justin.tv show one solution to the problem. Justin Kan, during those 8 months he broadcast his life, would not have feared a secret wiretap. It might be a couple decades more, but I expect that eventually it'll be normal to wear a camera on your face. When everyone broadcasts, surveillance is meaningless.

by analogy: When your house is on fire, your normal response shouldnt be "well, lets burn the car too."

The usual response is to stop the fire.

I don't equate loss of privacy to a house fire. To be a good analogy, burning my car would need to be beneficial in some way.

I see what you're trying to get at, but I there's probably better way to make your point.

Your bank has information about your accounts. So it should be ok to make it public, right?

How did you make that leap? But, the card companies do sell your data in "aggregate". The phone companies as well.

In many countries around the world phone companies are highly regulated entities.

I've never had the phone company suggest I apply for a job there based on things they know about me.

As far as I know the location data a phone company has is not as fine-grained as GPS. But I agree with your point that a person's call data records are very sensitive information.

So what? They don't use that data for any other reason than for billing. If they do otherwise and they are found out it would be a PR and legal disaster of epic proportions!

Sorry to disrupt your narrative but a theoretical action by Trump is worse than what's already happened under Obama?

http://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/477921/

> During that time period, state and federal law enforcement requested information on 408 riders and 205 drivers. Uber, however, only fully complied with 32 percent of requests, while partially complying with 53 percent of requests.

Not exactly an epidemic.

But that's not my point. My point is actual exploitation of Ubers data that's already happened, is worse than fear mongering politically biased hypotheticals

If you look at Uber's actual transparency report you'll see the feds only requested 65 records. The governments doing the mass data requests were mostly local, state, airports and courts: https://transparencyreport.uber.com/

i got one of those, it definitely creeped me out

How come no one is throwing fuss about this for Google's foobar challenge? This is the same exact thing.

In today's time, we give up privacy for convenience. If you use a smart phone, Facebook, windows/google anything you are already giving up privacy. Stop pretending that 5 mins location monitoring is a big deal.

Stop pretending people can't decide for themselves how much privacy they want and from whom

They can decide, they choose by not using the product.

Hmm I got the Uber challenge quite frequently but I've never gotten this Google one. How do I find this?

> In today's time, we give up privacy for convenience. If you use a smart phone, Facebook, windows/google anything you are already giving up privacy. Stop pretending that 5 mins location monitoring is a big deal.

I find it quite disturbing to see ridiculous comments where one wrong is made right by pointing to other wrongs. We wouldn't need any laws or law enforcement if such logic were to be followed in every area of life.

"There are full body scanners at airports. Stop pretending that putting curtains at home is going to help."

"There are surveillance cameras in many places. Stop pretending that controlling the privacy of your personal photos really matters."

I'm sure I can imagine many other comebacks if I spend more time on this.

That's a dramatic and very silly example.

>why do they need to know where I'm at after I get dropped off? That's a little intrusive to me

A little?

> as far as I know you only can see that some app is accessing your GPS currently, not which one(s) exactly

On iOS if you go into [Settings > Privacy > Location Services] you can see which apps have used your location "recently" or in the last 24 hours. There is a legend at the bottom of that page for what the icons mean.

Is there any way to see on Android?

Settings > personal > location (Android 6 at least). You can disable the privilege in Settings > device > apps > Uber > permissions.

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."

Or don't accept this app update. If/when Uber stops the current app version (with 3 privacy settings) from working with their server API, switch from Uber to a competitor.

Apple can also change their policy for ride-sharing apps, to force "While Using" as an option, or block Uber's update from the App Store.

Remember that it was only after apps abused the contact database, that permissions were added by Apple to give users control over apps. Apple can step up now and define a new policy that responds to these new abuses of user choice, within the ride-sharing app category.

This is one of the few benefits of Apple's walled garden review of apps. Perhaps we will eventually thank Uber for pushing the boundaries of etiquette, forcing Apple to regulate Uber and their peers.

How can you not accept the update, when they do not even write release notes?

I've learned the hard way to time-delay app updates from over-reaching companies. A week or two is usually sufficient for major issues to surface on HN.

You're right - it would be better if Apple allowed users to rollback to the N-1 version of an app. That would send a real-time signal from users to app vendors, rather than slow complaints via press and social media.

> it would be better if Apple allowed users to rollback to the N-1 version of an app.

Apple should allow users to revert to any older version. There are so many apps that become worse over time, and it's only after an update that the shortcomings are found, with no way to remedy the situation. But Apple really doesn't care about such things on the user experience front. I have provided Apple feedback on this before.

The thing I like in this case is that iOS explicitly warns the user when an app requests for location services permission for use while the app is not running.

It's just another reminder that iOS is a walled garden in which you have no freedom.

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

This is totally impractical.

Maybe it isn't practical, but at least it's what I did today.

Put your phone in a Faraday cage for a few minutes after you get out of an Uber. Cases cost less then $10 on Amazon.

And risk being out of reach for everyone else too for that duration? And what if the person forgets to take it out of the case after the five or so minutes? I believe this will cause a lot of panic among people who're trying to reach the Uber rider, especially if the rider is a woman. There have been instances of assault and worse by drivers in some places.

Yeah, that's a dark pattern. It should default to not tracking me after the ride is done.

You can also continue to call Uber rides with location using Apple Maps, even if you don't give the Uber app location permission.

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.

> but Uber as a company is very ethical

You've got to understand how directly this clashes with the media coverage re: driver rights.

Yes and as an employee looking from the inside out, I see how negative the press is, and before I joined Uber I was biased by the media coverage as well. But everything I've seen on the inside directly goes against the media coverage I've seen. Take it with a grain of salt obviously.

They might be ethical towards you. They're not ethical towards me, the person being driven, nor towards the Uber driver who's driving me.

I've seen first-hand uber employees doing things on behalf of the company that are even more unethical than what's being reported in the press.

Member when Uber hired teams to book and ditch rides with their competitors? Member when they hired a private investigator to dig up dirt on a plaintiff who was suing them?

I member.

I member too !

Memberberries for President

Uber has hired drivers in my country who it turns out are medically unfit to hold a driver's license, while running ads claiming they do exhaustive background checks.

That is not "the media". Your employer is totally unethical.

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” --Upton Sinclair

A simpler option would be to get the customer to also swipe to end the ride (as an option). This way you get two sources for the end of the ride?

And what if the customer swipes early?

thats an easy thing to validate. If the vehicle is still moving, or if the driver also hasnt confirmed the trip has ended you can work it out.

"easy"

Proceeds to introduce multiple points of failure.

Seems fairly easy: When the customer swipes to end, it notifies the driver. If the driver agrees, the ride ends there. If the driver doesn't agree, he tells the customer to undo the swipe or they will stop driving and the customer can get out.

What if the customer gives her phone to a friend (through a car window) during the ride? Similar thing happened to me abroad. A couple of us used a single phone with a local card, so the phone exchanged hands frequently.

idk if i'd trust anything uber tells me if i worked there.

same would go working at any sufficiently large org

"Large org", that's key here. Even a James Bond villain would require strict compliance of most of his underlings, maybe even more than average, except when not.

"Uber as a company is very ethical and takes the responsibility that we are entrusted with very seriously."

Probably every company has said that, yet we know how that usually turns out sooner rather than later (I'm looking at you, WhatsApp).

"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."

For now. What if a new higher manager comes and decides to use this information for other purposes (ad, sale etc.)? Some engineers might quit, but costumers can't take their data back.

My takeaway is: do not trust companies with more data than necessary to provide you a service and this is exactly such case.

I thought the drop-off points for large buildings could be a very reasonable justification for extending the tracking window for a few minutes on either side of the drive.

I understand that this could fall into 'data necessary to provide a better service' as opposed to simply providing the service as-is, but it seems like drop-off point locations are quite fundamental.

Why do you imply that I go inside the building I asked Uber driver to stop by? Actually, most of the time I get out on the corner and walk to my destination (which address I did not provide to Uber), because of traffic restrictions in city center.

I am very anti-tracking, but to be fair IF Uber is being above board with their intentions, this is exactly the type of question they could answer.

I'm not sure how this data actually helps. I'll tell Uber where to pick me up, and where I want to go, and I can tell the driver exactly where to stop.

Now, if this is to feed into their plans for autonomous taxis, that's all very well because I am really looking forward to being able to summon an autonomous electric car to take me wherever I want to go, but I still don't understand why they care about more than where I actually get out.

It has to do with collusion between driver and passenger. It protects everyone involved. It prevents a passenger from getting in the vehicle and saying, "I told the app I was going to the bijou duplex but I really need a driver 3 hours to run a bunch of errands. I think we can work out a deal thats beneficial to us both..." that's just one of millions of possible scenarios. Uber can now tell if driver and passenger just drove by the bijou duplex never ending the fare. All of this other squabbling about privacy blah blah blah is senseless. Just ask yourself one question, whom is it that is actually tracking me? For what reason? OK that's two questions. I think once you answer those questions you'll come to the same conclusion time after time, "I'm just not important." On that note one can also conclude, "There's nothing about me, nothing I do, say nor anyplace I go is needed by Zuckerberg. He's doing just fine without my info. The worst thing that's gonna happen is I'll mysteriously get toothpaste coupons or rental car discounts."

I take it you stand behind the "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" argument?

Yes and no. A few years ago I realised my digital bathroom scale's calibration was out of whack so like anyone whom might have lost the instructions I google the make and model of my scale to download them.

Later that evening while on a different computer I noticed in the right-hand margin of facebook an ad for bathroom scales. I was horrified. I felt violated, tracked and spied on. This wasn't spill over from localised cookies. There was a database somewhere keeping track of my online activities and passing that info along to whomever asked for it I guess.

On the one hand nobody cares or is watching what I'm doing. But what if I'm a high school teacher and a female student infatuated with me males advances which after being rebuffed goes public with false accusations of how I tried to rape her, will I be sitting in court watching a prosecutor show a jury the gay monkey porn sites I visit because he or she was able to subpoena this "database" of all my online activity and now because of it I may lose my job or career? I don't know. Maybe that's the whole reason privacy rights are such an issue.

If it means catching bad guys I'm for it but if it means scrutinizing the innocent then yeah of course I don't want my privacy violated.

Whatsapp was ethical, the problem is with the company that bought them. And they didn't necessarily know that when they sold (even if, an offer of that size is hard to decline).

That's exactly my point. If company is ethical today, it doesn't mean it will be tomorrow, for whatever reasons.

I call bullshit on not knowing that Facebook is a privacy whoring company before WhatsApp sold to them.

Hey, who cares about ethics when there's billions of dollars on the table /s

I mean who wouldn't have realistically accepted literally billions of dollars to sell an app people willingly install on their phones? Ethics is all relative.

Were they profitable before? Were the controlling parties financially comfortable?

If my company is profitable (or has revenue growth and is likely to become profitable) and a scummy company wants to buy it, I'm going to say no.

Hard as it may be for some of the HN/VC crowd to believe, but there are people out there who start companies with their own money, because they believe in something. At no point does "find some fat megacorp to buy us our" enter the game plan.

[Harsh words ahead]

Hindsight is 20/20, and based on that I personally would say WhatsApp was not ethical even when it was a standalone company. If it had been so, it wouldn't have allowed Facebook to acquire it in the first place! I realize this sounds harsh and probably implies bad motives on the owners, but whatever WhatsApp wrote in its blogs pre-acquisition were all principles that could be sold at the right price. That's exactly what it has come to now that we know how it's being used.

I would also consider it insulting to human intelligence if the WhatsApp founders had truly believed that they would be able to continue with their stated privacy stance after being bought by Facebook, of all companies (what they wrote on the blog at that time can be seen as public posturing).

You don't need hindsight. You just need to look at the many many times it has happened before.

Cash pressure + lots of valuable assets liquidised legally that just require a change to ToS = said assets for sale + temporary bad PR.

> an offer of that size is hard to decline

Ethics isn't about doing the right thing when it's easy.

I fundamentally agree with you about giving only as much data as necessary. Personally I don't know why we force a binary decision on location tracking. If it were Google or Facebook doing it to me, iI would be distressed.

> Probably every company has said that

Does your company have a set of values to which it says it holds itself and its employees? Excellent - lets play Enron Bingo! Go through your company values and every time one of them matches or strongly overlaps with the list provided in Enrons 1998 Annual Report[1] - Shout "WOOOO" really loudly.

[1] * - RESPECT - INTEGRITY - COMMUNICATION - EXCELLENCE

> Excellent - lets play Enron Bingo! Go through your company values and every time one of them matches or strongly overlaps with the list provided in Enrons 1998 Annual Report[1] - Shout "WOOOO" really loudly.
Now there are two people who insist on escorting me out of the building.

This is brilliant! As a fellow skeptic of "corporate values" I'm going to remember this one.
It might be a fun exercise to trawl through the company values of failed / disgraced companies to see if there's any pattern, or compare to genuinely ethical companies (if there is such a thing) to see whether there's a contrast.

> but costumers can't take their data back.
For a US company, yes. For EU companies, the EU privacy law says you can only use the data for the original purposes, and based on what the person consented to. You can't grab all data (since that's overbroad), and "consent" can't just be "click through on legalese".
If you're concerened about privacy, don't use US companies.

bold statement, but actually what they do here would be totally legal in the EU. cause they say it's for fraud detection. Basically EU is not better when it comes to privacy. The law is totally crap and doesn't actually defend against anything.

In Canada too you can request all of the data that a company has on you. You just have to fill in a form or call the company and if they refuse you can contact the privacy office in your respective province or the federal privacy commision or just plain lawyer up.

Earlier this year, WhatsApp implemented platform-wide, end-to-end encryption, based on the Signal Protocol: https://techcrunch.com/2016/04/05/whatsapp-completes-end-to-...
That should be applauded.

> but Uber as a company is very ethical
Even if you would believe Uber is an ethical company (there is good reason to believe for-profit companies generally are not and also good reason Uber especially is not), the underlying problem is that the data could fall into other hands. Three letter agencies can ask for that data, someone could leak the data, etc. I know the last one sounds unlikely but stuff like this happens all the time.

Calling bs on "uber as a company is very ethical" and "nothing nefarious is going on":
Spying on a journalist: http://www.businessinsider.com/ubers-new-york-manager-invest...
Tracking celebrities and sharing publicly: http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/10/03/god-view-...

Both articles from 2014. Uber 2014 and Uber 2016 are different companies, probably 5x the number of employees and has matured substantially especially with employee conduct expectations. I would be shocked and angry if something like that happened today.

That's not how trust works.

Have personnel changes happened at the highest levels of the organization since 2014? The abuse discussed in the links came down from the top ranks of Uber.
When did you join Uber? If it was not prior to 2014, what makes you an expert on how the company had mature and, if prior to 2014, why were you not shocked and angry when these events occurred in 2014?

Uber 2014 and Uber 2016 are different companies
What are you basing this on and point me to supporting evidence of this, failing that I need something more convincing than increased headcount as a motivator to give Uber my trust as a consumer again.

Really? A simple search found me an article from 2016 where a judge lambasted Uber's counsel about hiring a company who did unlicensed background investigation against someone who filed a lawsuit against Kalanick[1].
I've heard from you and multiple employees that you would be "shocked or angry" or believe "Uber is a good company and wouldn't have joined otherwise." But I find this hard to believe because if that was the case, then Uber would have lost most of their engineers in the beginning, pre-2014, when they were doing really shady stuff. Maybe you and your colleagues that use Hacker News that publicly commented on this thread would quit if something unethical happened, but words are empty while actions are not and I haven't heard of a case where a large group of Uber engineers or employees are protesting about their company's unethical nature. Color me unconvinced when I hear your words.
http://fortune.com/2016/07/25/judge-uber-background-check-la...

Weak, so weak. This is how the company was founded, and they want us to trust them with their data? Hell no.

- Search Twitter for fraud rides in London .. happens to tons of people a month but they don't care. I got hit up for a 1k ride in London yet im in the US.
- Try canceling your account .. you have to contact their support who will cancel it for you. What i signed up once and you let my account get hacked and dont care and I cant cancel my account myself? I have to wait a week????
- SOmeone I know has leased a car through one of their leasing car companies and it has ruined his life financially with all their nickel and diming and no invoice from them in regards to what he is being charged for. They just brush him off... he works two jobs .. a sales job and Uber to feed his family.
- In a few years all Uber's loyal drivers who use it to get by and feed their families will be screwed over by Uber.
How can anyone call Uber ethical ... it's the epitome of why Hilary Clinton lost as it's all about making huge profits for a very small subset of people at the expense of the majority who Uber is just using to get filthy rich.
Worst company ever run by silicon valley lucky ass unicorn douchebags who don't give a damn about anyone but themselves. Their smug asses need to meet the smack down of govt. regulationS!!!

You might want to edit or delete most of that later section.

He isnt wrong.

Über is the epitome of why Hilary lost?

Yes, she targeted the non-forgotten man and woman like Uber execs and their employees pulling billions to miollions to 6 figures.

Why should I?

Best definition of Uber that I read in life! Could not agree more!

Didn't Uber also do tracking of user battery and establish that they can charge more, more reliably when the user has low battery?

That is deliciously evil.

There you go http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/new...

Apparently they have simply observed that users are more likely to pay the surge pricing when low on battery, and they claim not to factor it into the surge algorithm itself.
Makes sense to me, afaik the driver UI shows surge pricing based on an area and not individual users.

I think if you have to explain yourself you have already lost. I always use Uber but uninstalled it 2 seconds after I discovered I couldn't change the location settings to my liking. Literally typing this from a Lyft haha

If only need 5 mins after the trip, Uber is in strong position as large user to work with Apple on how to extend the existing background API to cover its use case.

as a fun exercise... I am going to find out how many employees Uber has. From there, who knows. Lol.
#username_might_check_out

> 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.
How would you even know if "something nefarious or even careless was being done"? If there are thousands of employees, wouldn't it just be difficult for everyone to know what everyone else is working on, other "secret initiatives management has sponsored", etc.? There could be so many things happening right now where the information is "above your pay grade". My point is that even if the CEO or CTO or anyone else makes these statements, it's easy to be skeptical considering Uber's history and ethics.
I know many companies that allow one to report issues much higher in the chain, have "no retaliation" policies, and so on, but it's really a stretch to ask employees to fully trust the system and worse, ask people outside the organization to trust the employees and the system.

My roommate works at Uber as an engineer. He has a pretty high moral bar and I'd bet there are enough like him at Uber that doing shady things systematically would get exposed to the outside world fairly quickly. Notice I said systematically because any company at scale with thousands of employees may have lonewolves doing shady stuff. But that is different than a company culture that endorses or encourages that. I haven't gotten any vibe that Uber does either and if it did, I'm pretty certain my friend and engineers like him would jump in a heartbeat.

You and your friend are just too naive. There always will be not so honest engineers and you will never know who exactly.

That is not unique to Uber. It is a possibility for any company and for large companies, it introduces major risk of damage. This is why companies have controls in place. If you are arguing that the norms industry-wide should change, then I can understand. If you are saying any of this is unique to Uber and doesn't apply to Google or Apple etc., I would disagree.

I'm not trying to say it's unique to Uber, of course. It's reality of our life.

The problem is not when a company is suddenly deciding to do something outright evil.
The problem is when the company starts slowly pushing the boundaries in ways that can be justified if you squint right.
E.g. consider this extra tracking. The feature in itself is fine, as long as the data is protected well enough and not abused.
The problem is that staff not used to think about nefarious uses are likely to defend this kind of collection without thinking about all the tiny little privacy implications.
So when a less moral person suggests a little tweak here or a little tweak there and justify it with a seemingly ok reason, it is likely to fly straight past a lot of people.
Another little change here and there, and suddenly things start to fall out of it that wasn't intended.
How many IBM engineers in the 20's and 30's had any inkling that their work on tabulating machines would aid in the Holocaust? Most would presumably have been horrified. Even the IBM execs that negotiated IBMs deals with Hitler would likely have been utterly horrified. Each little step was just one tiny step further from the last, and most had plausible positive spin on them. And the worst was hidden from them.
This is the difficult part of ensuring the morality of corporations, or organizations, or society in general: It is incredibly hard to get a sufficient overview to be able to predict whether any given action will contribute to an immoral outcome. Even when you're right there, "flicking the switch" that finally ties it all together. It's just one more tiny step, that from ground level will often not seem any different than the last step, which turned out ok.
EDIT:
The only way of ensuring the a corporation acts morally, is not to act morally, but to act specifically to take steps that binds the corporation so it is unable to do bad things:
Make sure you don't have data that can be abused, if at all possible, or at least destroy it as soon as possible.
Make sure you have systems that actively prevent staff from accessing data they have no need for.
Consider if you can transform data in ways that makes it less intrusive (e.g. if you don't need the full precision of certain location data, reduce the precision; if you don't need to be able to tie it to a certain individual, anonymise; if you only need aggregate/summary data, aggregate/summarise as early as possible and aggressively purge the raw data).
Ever barrier you remove from access to data, creates opportunities for innocent-sounding requests that turns out to have immoral reasons.
E.g. I've had managers request data from ex-customers that wuld have been in backups except for aggressive policies on purging it, where it turned out that rather than legitimately e.g. wanting to help them recover data, said manager wanted to hand the data to another manager, without realising that said other manager was planning on mining said ex-customers data for sales leads for a new product that would directly compete with them.
Flagrant violation of our contracts, and of UK data protection laws. But the initial request sounded innocent enough, and I only found the reason because I'm extremely paranoid about these things. The manager that made the request didn't suspect a thing, for example.
Actually not having the data made refusing the request a lot easier, and also prevented the manager that wanted the data from trying to find ways around me.

I generally agree with you that not having the data would make it easier to refuse. But not having the data does come at a cost: in this case, poorer user experience.
As a side note, I was mainly talking abt Uber. Your post seems generic and your concerns apply to every large tech company. Most of these companies already have policies in place such as audit trail for data access, access control etc.

I'm not saying that in this specific case it's wrong to collect the data.
I'm saying that to "avoid evil" in the future it is insufficient for current developers to be ethical now.
You need to build systems that actively make it difficult, so that it takes persistence and intent to overcome if you want to do something bad whenever possible. Force people to face that they are putting in effort to bypass restrictions and breaking rules to do what they want to do, instead of "just" accessing data that are readily available to them, and far more will question the justification for requests they are given.

So exactly what additional safeguards had he demanded be put into place to protect this data?

You are assuming you (or I) know the safeguards they already have in place. For example, if they have an audit trail for anyone that access this data or if they have independent audits on data access, it could be sufficient. Both of these are norms at major corporations. I am not privy to the specifics of what Uber has in place beyond hearing that they have controls in place that are industry norms.

> Uber as a company is very ethical
There are fairly substantial quantities of legal documentation that are evidence against this remarkable claim. They get covered here frequently.

>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.
HAHAHAHAHA Nice try!
> The ride-sharing company said that between July and December 2015, it had provided information on more than 12 million riders and drivers to various U.S. regulators and on 469 users to state and federal law agencies.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/uber-customer-data-priva...
>the company's blog titled "Rides of Glory." The company examined its rider data, sorting it for anyone who took an Uber between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m. on a Friday or Saturday night. Then it looked at how many of those same people took another ride about four to six hours later – from at or near the previous nights' drop-off point. (...) Uber has deleted the blog post
http://www.marketplace.org/2014/11/18/business/final-note/ub...
>Earlier this month Angie Bird woke up at her home in London to discover she had been billed for a series of minicab journeys she had allegedly made the previous evening … in the Mexican cities of Guadalajara and Aguascalientes, more than 5,500 miles away.
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/apr/22/uber-scam-hack...
>Uber is using GPS to punish drivers in China who get too close to protests
http://fusion.net/story/150389/uber-is-using-gps-to-punish-d...
>Study: Uber and Lyft have ‘pattern of discrimination’ against black passengers. Waiting times for black Seattle passengers were 35% longer, and Boston drivers cancelled rides for black passengers more than twice as frequently, study found
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/31/uber-lyft...
>According to internal Uber emails, the investigation began with a note from Uber’s general counsel, Sallie Yoo. The day that Schmidt filed the complaint against Kalanick, Yoo sent an email to Uber’s chief security officer, saying, "Could we find out a little more about this plaintiff?" The request was forwarded to the company’s head of Global Threat Intelligence, Mathew Henley.
http://www.theverge.com/2016/7/10/12127638/uber-ergo-investi...
>Uber as a company is very ethical and takes the responsibility that we are entrusted with very seriously
Please go with your bullshit somewhere else.

> but Uber as a company is very ethical
If it wasn't for the apparent money laundry[1], drivers exploitation[2], cashing out on desperation[3], and tax evasion[4], maybe I could believe that.
[1]https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-25/uber-lose... (How can the company survive?)
[1]https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/search?q=uber (Closing and reopening with different names in the UK. Apparently 4? times so far... Hmm...)
[2]http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/5/4/1523310/-UBER-s-Shari...
[3]https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/1805286/uber-accused-of-cashin...
[4]https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/oct/20/uber-pays...

You forgot the best ones: using dirty tactics against journalists [1] and Lyft [2],
I don't understand how anyone can with a straight face claim that "Uber as a company is very ethical company". I would rank the company management (not drivers) as ethical as the New York mafia.
[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/an-uber-exec-brought-up-the-i...
[2] http://money.cnn.com/2014/08/11/technology/uber-fake-ride-re...

Very rare to have a company this size to be ethical.

Yes. These companies have teams of people spewing out a list of values for PR, and thinking that they have Jedi mind trick powers over the employees (on some people it actually works!). It's the company image, not how the company operates.

If only we were able to rate management and they were let go with a 3 or less stars review.

I might be with you on the others, but [3] is just media hysteria based on faulty logic.
I've seen this type of story repeatedly after there's been an incident in some city. If it's not Uber it's a hotel chain or similar. It's easy clicks for tabloid newspapers. They probably have a template for this sort of story ready to go. And there will be plenty more ammo for this sort of thing as more companies move to automated pricing models.
Almost everyone who had to pay surge prices that day would not have been directly involved in the explosion (or even seen it). Are companies now supposed to compensate for any bad thing that might be happening in somebody's life? Presumably those who chose to pay surge prices did so because it was still the cheapest/best way of getting home. So even at those prices Uber was better than any alternative.
EDIT: Forgot to mention, it's also possible some people might have only got home that night because of surge pricing, because it increases the number of drivers.
If I had to buy a very expensive airline ticket at the last minute to see a sick relative, would the airline be exploiting me?
Previous HN discussion and article on the Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics, which is relevant here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10367855

I think the parent's point is that there's nothing hidden going on in addition to the known business model and standard company practices. You obviously disagree with that business model, and that's fine. For the millions of people who don't disagree with it, parent says: "we are not cheating or abusing you behind your back".
Those links are also pretty weak: all speculation or opinion pieces about things that are out in the open:
1) this is not even close to money laundering? 1) this is just a list of companies with "uber" in their name? besides, it's very common for companies to structure and re-structure themselves without anything unethical going on. it's also common to do it for tax purposes, see below. 2) quite a bold opinion piece about the driver situation. clearly, with so many drivers and customers taking part, it's a matter of opinion. it's reasonable to call it unethical if that's your view but it's not really what the parent meant. 3) pure media hysteria. good to see The Sun as a source on HN. 4) the tax thing again. as it stands, everyone wants to lower their taxes and almost all large companies do this a lot and do it legally. if your view is that they should just volunteer as much tax as possible, you're welcome to that view - there are signs that the law will start to change to be less forgiving of this. however, the specific case in the article is probably the worst example you could pick: the ability to offset losses from previous years isn't even close to being a grey area.
Do cab drivers come in for the same criticism? I've been scammed and lied to so many times by (official) cab drivers and they are absolute sharks for exploiting desperation and ignorance. There are investigative stories linking taxi cab rings with genuine organised crime. I guess they must do perfect tax returns?

'God Mode'?
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/10/03/god-view-...

Thank you for your comment, always good to read and learn from other points of view.
I can agree with the weak links. Unfortunately didn't have much time to find better ones. Also, having The Sun as source in HN doesn't give it much of a credibility, but I'm sure there are more reliable sources out there [1]. I can also agree that this point can be made from a bit of a media hysteria. But a company whose business model makes prevail supply/demand rules on a disaster, seems like a bit sick to me. From my point of view, this is not an ethical company behavior. And when I mean company, I mean company as a whole despite believing there are departments within the company where things are done ethically (parent's point maybe?).
Also, again in my opinion, a company shouldn't attempt tax evasion, by any means p.e. tax evasion schemes (most of them arguably legal) as it impacts all country's and overall economy. This said, I classify most big companies as unethical. This can possibly be one of the main reasons the gap between rich and poor is getting bigger every year as big sharks cash out clean out of the exploited marked. If a company disagrees with a country's taxation model, ethically, maybe it shouldn't attempt to get to that market?
Company name changes can be seen as tactical maneuvers used for tax evasion also and debt evasion in case the company goes bust. On previous + [2],[3], altogether, this may present no substantial evidence on money laundry but do you really believe investors would be naively burning billions worth of investment on a company which on 7+ years of existence didn't present, neither is close to presenting, any profit?
I'm not saying cab drivers shouldn't be put through similar criticism, maybe they should. But I think we cannot generalize on that. There are good and bad professionals everywhere. What I can say, based on what I know from my country, is that cab drivers cannot scam you as their fees are regulated. They cannot charge you more that X per Km as their taximeters are regulated by the government to ensure that. They need to have a professional driving license and be identifiable to the customer. And they're also entitled to pay their taxes accordingly. Of course one can always hear a bad experience from time to time, but again, that is subject to happen in every industry.
[1] https://twitter.com/SarahBertolozzi/status/77734731474688409...
[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-25/uber-lose...
[3] http://qz.com/618022/ubers-ceo-says-the-company-is-burning-1...

I think we have quite a fundamentally different view on morality but thanks for providing a thoughtful response. I disagree with most of it so not sure it's worth going through each part ;) Only point I feel the need to address is the general imbalance in assumptions.
In my experience, taxi drivers hide the meter, claim that hours are off-meter, claim there are special fees for certain journeys which don't exist, refuse to take rides they are obligated to take etc. Absolutely not rare at all in major European cities (and endemic in the developing world). I've lost count of how many times I've had it happen, attempted or seen other people targeted with it. This is mostly in major European cities. Formal complaints with the license number don't work ("we'll remind the driver of his obligations").
I don't find this especially unlikely behaviour - they are relatively unmonitored and unaccountable. They are distributed - no reputation as individuals. They deal with a lot of cash, they deal with people who don't know where they are or what the rules are. It's often one person's word against another's. I have plenty of first hand experience of misbehaviour, and I know regulatory body does little to address it.
I find it odd that you assume the best of them - you even say they cannot do anything because a regulation exists. Obviously this is untrue. Yet with Uber your view is borderline conspiracy (despite them also having regulations!). Do you think all currently-unprofitable startups are laundering money on a large scale? Where did these billions and billions of dirty money come from? Is YC itself laundering dirty money through startups? They changed their org structure a few times recently - are they hiding something with this? I've seen multiple YC people write about tax efficiency too!

You're welcome! :) Thanks for replying back too. Always nice to see different points of view.
Yes, agreed, I could have used better words other than cannot do anything because of regulation, of course they can and I'm sure some do. And I'm sure some Uber drivers out there do the exact same, maybe through different means. As I said before, good and bad professionals, you can find them everywhere. It's not something you can generalize.
What I meant is that what distinguishes them from Uber is the fact they are government regulated. I know it may not stands as much, but if everything works as supposed to, it would work well. I'm also assuming you face a different reality (country) different than mine, so not sure if there's a point in going forward with this. Just to finalize on this, some fun fact: in my country every public passenger transportation needs to have a specific insurance (often expensive) and a professional driving license. This is mandatory for every public transportation (cabs included) but Uber. The list of exceptions goes on, and on...
Regarding tax efficiency we share different views as well. And I'm not saying as part of a conspiracy theory of mine thar all unprofitable startups are laundering money on a large scale. A startup is usually expected to start profiting after 5 years and Uber is just far from that. I also try to put myself on an investor shoes and figure out If I'd invest my money on a company as such. My answer is no.
Regarding this particular question:
> Where did these billions and billions of dirty money come from?
A little bit of conspiracy speculation now: Hidden in tax heavens and needed to be brought to light ;)

> A startup is usually expected to start profiting after 5 years and Uber is just far from that
There's obviously no hard-and-fast rule about 5 years. Other people value companies differently from you and have greater risk appetite. It's pretty normal for people to have different views on such things (like the morality of various tax arrangements!); that's not evidence of corruption.
> A little bit of conspiracy speculation now: Hidden in tax heavens and needed to be brought to light ;)
That's not where it came from, that's where it currently is (according to you). Even so, a tax heaven is not the same as money that needs laundering.

> There's obviously no hard-and-fast rule about 5 years. Other people value companies differently from you and have greater risk appetite. It's pretty normal for people to have different views on such things (like the morality of various tax arrangements!); that's not evidence of corruption.
Agreed. There's no hard rule on that. I just find it hard to believe someone would be up to investing a big chunk of money, for that much amount of time, without having any return. But yes, people choose on what to believe. I prefer to take it this way as I'm past Wonderland a while ago. Let's hope I'm wrong.
> That's not where it came from, that's where it currently is (according to you). Even so, a tax heaven is not the same as money that needs laundering.
I think it can be both actually. And it may need laundering in case there's no justification on where it's coming from. But again, this is all just conspiracy as Panama papers never happened.

[3] why does uber have to go around their prices algorithm because of an attack? I mean, that's how they operate: more demand = more expensive. They could use the marketing to do it but they don't really need to.
I don't understand why people expect corporations to work as a non-profit

Please send this message to management: "fuck off". Thank you.

> 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.
Then how come the "while using" option is not there ? the best way of not being careless with sensitive data is not having them in the first place.

Surely they can get the pick up points from the drivers data, can't they flag where the found the passenger? Why would they need it from the users side too?

This kind of fraud happened to me three days ago. I filed a complaint with Uber and they resolved the issue. I certainly think something should be done in the product to help with this, but there may be better options, including letting the user click a button to declare that the trip is over.

Remember: If you're not in the USA, then US law doesn't protect your privacy! And US privacy law is nothing like EU privacy law.
Has Uber considered reforming as a European company, under EU data protection law? That would a nice way to show that you take privacy very seriously.

If Uber tries this in Australia, someone will file a complaint with our privacy commissioner and then Uber will be very, very sorry.

A few things that speak a lot:
- Algorithmic Labor and Information Asymmetries: A Case Study of Uber’s Drivers https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2686227
- Uber: The Big Data Company http://www.forbes.com/sites/ronhirson/2015/03/23/uber-the-bi...
- How Uber is Selling all Your Ride Data http://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/030916/how-ub...
- How Uber Profits Even While Its Drivers Aren't Earning Money http://motherboard.vice.com/read/how-uber-profits-even-while...
- Uber claims US regulators collected data from 11m passengers https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/12/uber-us-r...

The problem is that you need only one employee without moral concerns but with the necessary data-access and the data you are collecting can be used to abuse your customers. At my former employer I had access to cell-phone usage data and for example I could have tracked the calls and geolocation of my girlfriend. Only becasue database grants were assigned automatically to everyone who required them.
The only secure way of collecting data is not collecting data at all.

> We were told the reason to track up to 5 mins after the trip is for fraud
Yes, sure. There is always some sort of "reason" to "justify" mass surveillance. F that.
It's just NOT acceptable. I'll never use Uber again.

Thanks for providing your perspective. Did anyone question the decision to remove the option of only allowing Uber to use location while using the app? That would have been a reasonable way to gather data but allow people uncomfortable with background tracking to opt-out.

While Uber may be interested in the "fraud" aspects - and I think that's a harsh word for what is "walk 50m from drop location" - it really ought to be up to the user to decide what the drop pin should be. Especially when it comes to uber-pool rides, riders may not want to disclose their residence or other locations to random passengers. The only thing that should matter is whether the rider got off at the dropped pin, and not whether the rider walks to some other place.

> Uber as a company is very ethical
Nice try, Travis Kalanick.

> but Uber as a company is very ethical
IPO, new management, all that data to sell. or (more likely) Bankruptcy, all that loss to recoup
Ethics of today don't mean a thing.

> but Uber as a company is very ethical and takes the responsibility that we are entrusted with very seriously.
Look I'm sure you believe that but there's many many many many data points that show that that's just not the case.

I'm sorry but Uber has broken the law in how many different cities, and you have the gall to call Uber "ethical"? Um, no. Uber is not ethical. Uber willfully breaks laws they don't like when they think they can get away with it.
Why should I EVER trust Uber to obey the law or act ethnically towards me, when they already why as if laws are optional?
Uber can get fucked.

Do you equate law with your society's ethics? Sometimes the two are well-aligned, I think, but not always. In a democratic society, they should be aligned, but the truth is, it isn't the rank-and-file of society making the laws.

So to paraphrase "I know we had problems in the past - but trust us, we're good guys!"
Put your money where your mouth is - explicitly state in your terms of service specific safeguards of my data and large monetary rewards for a beach of those terms on your part...you never do anything bad with our data right? This should be easy...

Ex-Uber employee here. Ethics and values were roughly 80% of the reason why I chose to walk away from what was ostensibly my dream job after only a few months.
Being clear, my experience never saw misuse of customer info, just some legal but shady-as-shit ways they chose to do business.
EDIT: Sorry, my point being that, while I don't anticipate they'll abuse customer location tracking in the large, I would vehemently dispute the parent poster's supposition that everyone at Uber is super ethical. Rank and file engineer? Yeah, probably fine. Management? I expect TK and his lieutenant bros and bro-ettes will do whatever he can get away with.

Currently, I live in one of those large building complexes and have seen the related changes you bring up. The app has updated to show the different spots commonly used for pickup/drop off and I clicked on one of those instead of moving the pin every time like I used to.

Uber as a company is very ethical and takes the responsibility that we are entrusted with very seriously.
and at the same time plays dirty with city councils and hires a lot of lobbyists and slashes prices without advanced warning to drivers? all of those are unethical practices.

That's nice you believe that, except for the fact that only a few years ago Uber tracked the location of a Buzzfeed journalist from God mode, and was accordingly fined for it.[1]
In 2014, senior executive Emil Michael suggested using their service to dig up dirt on reporters.[2]
They further tracked a Buzzfeed reporter when she was late to a meeting with one of their executives, without her permission.[3]
The Uber data science team once used sensitive customer data to find a correlation between their ride data and prostituion, which was highlighted when it was quietly taken down.[4] Lest you think this was a one-off blog, then I refer you to the one entitled "Rides of Glory" [5] that tracked the one-night stands of their riders (you just can't make this shit up).[6]
At Uber's Boston launch party they thought it would be hilarious to track 30 users in what they dubbed "Creepy Stalker View", and one executive, Chris Sims, was shown travelling around in a car - live - causing him to quit the service in outrage.[7]
1. https://www.google.com.au/amp/www.theverge.com/platform/amp/...
2. https://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/uber-executive-suggests-di...
3. https://www.buzzfeed.com/johanabhuiyan/uber-is-investigating...
4. https://www.google.com.au/amp/venturebeat.com/2014/11/24/ube...
5. https://web.archive.org/web/20141118192805/http://blog.uber....
6. http://www.marketplace.org/2014/11/18/business/final-note/ub...
7. http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/10/03/god-view-...

There are several counterpoints to your opinion that Uber is a bastion of values and respect. Here are a few (excluding the many incidents involving drivers):
1. Your CEO refers to the impact of his company on his sex life as "Boober". https://pando.com/2014/02/27/we-call-that-boob-er-the-four-m... 2. Uber orders and then cancels thousands of rides of its biggest competitor, Lyft. http://money.cnn.com/2014/08/11/technology/uber-fake-ride-re... 3. Uber exec threatens a journalist Sarah Lacy with a smear campaign. https://pando.com/2016/05/04/npr-proves-once-again-uber-lyin... 4. God mode: Insiders tracked users personal movements and were fined 20k for misusing their access. http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/6/10726004/uber-god-mode-sett...
Your closing statement is spot on: it's not easy to believe "nothing nefarious is going on". For me, it's not even possible.

Can i email to dev for suggestions to eats@uber.com ?

Then by all means, track the driver always but the passenger should have the option of "only while using"

Unfortunately, "We were told the reason to track...is for fraud", does not make me very confident what you believe to be true is really true. And makes me even less confident considering your assertion that "nothing nefarious is going on. If there was, we the engineers would be against it completely." If your knowledge of what ultimately happens with the data relies merely on what you are told, how can it be possible for you to know nothing nefarious is going on?
I was more hoping you'd try to answer the part that addressed the "While Using" option being removed. I'm guessing that one might also be too difficult to answer honestly in a public forum?

> why do they need to know where I'm at after I get dropped off?
In China, there's a company that provides a free loyalty point program. The store signs up for it, and users download the app and can use it to collect points when a transaction is made at the store. The points can then be exchanged for discounts and other stuff.
All of this is free. How they make money is by selling the user behavior data.
One of the features is the app tracks where the user goes after a transaction is made, so stores can find patterns and possible ways to cross promote.
For example, it might show a trend that 60% of customers will go to the movie theater after dining at your restaurant. Or will go to the Nike store after visiting yours, so perhaps you want to adjust your prices, etc.

That's all well and good, but I'm turning off Uber's access to my GPS entirely.

Oh yeah, I don't like it either. Just saying this is another revenue stream for companies.

I'm pretty sure in Germany it'll pretty much be "this is illegal as it tracks data at the individual level". Especially since there is no need for this to enable the core service.

> 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.
You can force quit the app after using it, so it doesn't get GPS access. "Always" only grants access while the app is open in the background (of foreground of course). Not pretty, but a workaround.
> (as far as I know you only can see that some app is accessing your GPS currently, not which one(s) exactly
Don't have my phone set to English, so wording might be slightly off. Settings -> Privacy -> Location Services. A purple arrow means the app used GPS "recently" (so a few minutes ago)

Violation of privacy laws is one thing and bad enough in itself. But let's not forget that Uber violates various taxi laws as well. In Denmark, just now, the state prosecutor has formally prosecuted Uber for colluding to violate the taxi laws. So far, different Uber drivers have received fines and those fines have now been tried in appellate courts that upheld the fines. Now it's Uber's turn for its part in the violations.
I am not a big fan of those taxi laws, but I am not a fan of billion dollar corporations just doing as they are pleased either. They seem to have no regard for laws.

Didn't the Uber execs exactly state this publicly - that they are willing to brake the laws that they see are hindering innovation and a disruption?
I remember having read something like this but am unable to find it in my archives.

Try this one: http://www.news.com.au/finance/business/technology/uber-driv...

> I'm also curious how this will bump up against EU privacy laws
Waze has location settings set to Always, so I guess they won't care again.

"little intrusive" are very kind words. i would call it a brazen theft of privacy.

A ha! This thread has reminded me to check whether Background App Refresh might block this. Apple's iOS Developer Docs seem to strongly imply that's the case [1]:
> Important: A user can explicitly disable background capabilities for any app. If a user disables Background App Refresh in the Settings app—either globally for all apps or for your app in particular—your app is prevented from using any location services in the background. You can determine whether your app can process location updates in the background by checking the value of the backgroundRefreshStatus property of the UIApplication class.
Time to go disable Background App Refresh for the Uber app and leave location as "Always".
Edit: Yep! Disabled Background App Refresh and verified after a bit that the little "Some app is using your location" icon went away. Spread the word (and please Uber Engineering, don't try to stop us...)
[1] https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/Us...

Thanks for this workaround, the description and the link. As disturbing as it is that Uber is subjecting paying customers to such despicable treatment, I'm glad to know that there is an easier workaround (for iOS users) than turning on and off the location services permission before and after each ride to control this!
I don't have Background Refresh on at all (for any apps) since I find it draining the battery a lot for very little practical benefit for my usage.

Weird, this probably did/does not work for me. I had Background App Refresh for Uber and several other apps off for a long time, and I was presented with the notification that "Uber is using your location in background" yesterday. I did not use Uber yesterday.

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.

Not even for messaging app?

An option. Not a requirement for all apps.

I don't think they're suggesting a single toggle for the whole phone, just that it be a setting you can force for individual apps. You'd only do it to apps that have no business running in the background like Uber.

I'm pretty sure with most Android phones you can kill applications that are sent to the background immediately.

Android can do that if you enable developer tools. Not sure if it can be easily overridden by an app or not

iOS gives you the option to disable Background App Refresh either for all apps, or for individual apps: Settings -> General -> Background App Refresh

so this will disable location and all other data for uber if its not in the foreground?

That's a separate option.
Settings -> Privacy -> Location Services -> Uber -> Never

I'm don't know why you were downvoted, background refresh has nothing to do with the location setting.

Per Apple's developer docs, if background app refresh is off, the app can't process location updates in the background. This was mentioned elsewhere in this thread as well.

thanks!

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.

>" It may decide to do this for various reasons such a entering a geofence..."
Can you elaborate on this? Whats the connection with relaunching and a geofence?

I haven't worked with goefences, but I'm guessing you can tell the OS you're interested in receiving particular geofence events such as when a user enters one. So the OS will relaunch apps which subscribed to those events so they can act on it.
Someone who has actually worked with geofences, please correct me if I'm wrong.

Geofencing notifies your app when its device enters or leaves geographical regions you set up. If the App is terminated iOS will relaunch it IF the user gave it "Always" authorization for sharing location.

And you can turn all of those items off in the app's settings. It might be annoying although because it wont work as you want. It would be nice if apple added a general 'turn off all background activity' permission switch.

Geofence, significant location change, and push waking up the app don't happen on user forced shutdown. App urls though are a different matter. :)
I am not totally sure of geofencing.

Have you checked? I stumbled on it myself with background network, background upload requests get killed when the app is killed, and they don not resume even if you relaunch the app. I have a hunch all other background actitivity is the same way.

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.

I think it's ridiculous that you need an app to approximately control other background apps. Denying background access to the phone should be the default. Anything else should need a permission popup IMO.

iOS gets close to what you want. Apps have to ask for specific permission for specific reasons (location, background download, etc), otherwise it just get killed after a few minutes.
Security is always at odds with convenience. It's easy to require a pop up to ask for permission every time and have user getting so used to these pop ups that they just automatically tap "yes"

I agree. Apps shouldn't be able to just run background processes willy-nilly, and I hate how that drains my battery for no good reason.

> 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.
There are valid reasons for this, e.g., if you want your app to work on Android devices without the proprietary Google applications.

I thought that Cyanogen had something like what you are describing. Can anyone confirm?

Confirmed. See my previous comment.

I want effectively a phone that works like Sandstorm. :) If I want it to have a right outside itself, I'll grant it.

iOS does that?
You can set location permission for App with "Never/While Using/Always".
You can disable Background App refresh for individual App. iOS App didn't even have ability to run in background in previous version.

You misunderstand. The App apparently can refuse to opt-in to the While Using option (Uber now only has Never/Always). This is ridiculous, and Apple's fault.

I wish iOS forced all apps to offer "Always/While Using/Never" for location info. It's bullshit that Uber can refuse to offer the middle choice.

A thousand times this.

So...Uber has Always/Never functionality and you propose and change that makes the user choose Always/Never/Never?

Would be nice. But, then only the carriers and the platform owners get to track you. That's not really fair, either.

You can do that already with user exposed controls on iOS. Just force shut down the app.

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 that can easily "break the internet" for non tech users if not handled in a smart way.

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.

I don't know which android distribution you're using but mine has that. Can recommend Cyanogenmod with privacy guard to everyone: it allows you to deny wake locks to applications. After doing this my battery chart is flat for 6 hours straight if I don't use my phone (I think that's the longest time I've tried).
Telegram is the only application with wake lock permissions left. I once even tried denying my lock screen the permission, which was a mistake... Took a while to turn the device back on.

I use CyanogenMod, and denying wake locks doesn't solve this problem. An application can register to receive any number of events that will wake it despite a lack of wake locks, like geofences, alarms, push notifications, waiting for another app to wake the device, etc.
It's the same reason that denying the permission to automatically run on boot is basically useless from a privacy perspective -- the application will just automatically run when some other event happens.

Turning off Background app refresh and removing the app from the recent apps list will accomplish this.

To prevent data from being used by the Uber app on Android I enabled data server mode, and from there denied the Uber app from having unrestricted data access (settings > apps > special access > unrestricted data access). This allows me to still use the Uber app and request a ride, and I'll receive texts once the car is near.
Last week during Thanksgiving travel I received a advertisement from the Uber app (as a notification) when I arrived at the SFO airport, even though I did not use the app at all that day. That's when I decided it was time to take away the unrestricted data access. I do agree that it would be nice to have better privacy options for each app, but I thought I'd share this workaround for the time being.

There is something very powerful you can do:
1. Stop using uber. Delete it. There is Lyft and Juno (in select markets).
2. Tell your friends about the dangers of using Uber.
You can make a profound change by voting with your pocket book. Lastly, believe it or not, a lot of your friends look to you for tech advice. Be vocal.

This is likely to work about as well as when a large number of tech people went around telling all their friends that Microsoft was evil in the 90s and early 2000s -- which is to say, not at all.
Empirically, very few people care much about their own privacy, and they seem to be entirely uninterested in hearing sermons on the topic. It'd be great if that worked, but it doesn't, so that won't solve this problem.

Windows, an OS, was not a commodity. Uber's service is.

There's nothing to stop the competition from doing the same.
The real issue is absolutely zero consequences for invasion of privacy.

When people ask why I use Lyft instead of Uber, I tell them about their sleazy actions a few years back (journalist intimidation, "god mode", etc.). I now have an up to date example to add.
Thanks, Uber!

Surprise. If you have an AT&T Samsung phone you can't uninstall it. The best you can do is go into Application Settings and Disable it. And then make sure you answer the two confirmation dialogs correctly for it to actually get disabled.
And guess what? It's already running. Even if you haven't used the app any time recently.

> Surprise. If you have an AT&T Samsung phone you can't uninstall it.
Can't you flash the ROM to reinstall Android (e.g., Cyanogen) without any built-ins of this kind?

Sure. If you're a techie that doesn't have a work provided phone with restrictions from doing so.

Tomorrow Uber competitors will start tracking people location too. One or several people that stopped using the app because of this doesn't mean anything because there are millions who continue to use it anyway.

"Tell your friends about the dangers of using Uber."
Please, honestly, tell me what I am in danger of. How could Uber tracking me for 5 minutes after arriving at my destination impact upon my life in any way?

I despise apps that do "Always" or "Never" for Location Tracking. It's really reflective of the larger issue of control of data, but this is particularly galling when the app hasn't given you an option nor a good reason for "Always" tracking. I'm always surprised when each iOS update continues _allowing the app to define available choices_ instead of giving the consumer the "While Using" option for any app requesting location.

Part of this is due to limitations in how iOS communicates this to users. "Always" can refer to either (1) always-on GPS, or (2) Bluetooth, which will ping app-owned beacons. The Bluetooth option is significantly narrower in scope, but uses the same dialog as the GPS.
I worked for a company that relied on Bluebooth beacons to provide a critical app experience (notifications before app itself is opened), so the app blocked the login screen until the Bluetooth-driven "Always" location authorization was granted. It was a headache explaining to users.

"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...

Counting down to the FBI NSL'ing [1] Uber for persistent, warrantless surveillance...
[1] https://www.eff.org/issues/national-security-letters

They don't need to, since they have the much better source of cell phone carriers with 24/7 location. And google android OS and apple to a certain extent.

Yes, people are like "oh NSL". Are they not paying attention to carrier access, stingray, general SIGINT? Like really this is HN at its most ridiculous.

Or in countries which have family registries it can be used to track people who fail to update the registry or move to a city illegally in places where intra-national movement is restricted.

The linked article mentions that you can select "Never" so as not to share your location with Uber.
However, on iOS at least, the latest version of the app is pretty much unusable when you do so. I did write to Uber regarding this a while back and the response was basically "Thank you. We'll forward it to the appropriate team." I suspect that they'd anything about it as the current functionality is by design more than anything else.

Well, so says Uber.
Unfortunately their history has proven to me that they're an utterly untrustworthy company and some lofty PR bullshit certainly won't change my opinion on them.

While 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.

> That, of course, doesn't occur in the five minutes after I get out of the car.
The logic is that it is likely that you will likely use Uber to go back as well. And they can't track your actual pickup spot unless they keep the tracking always on until you are picked up, which will be way more than 5 minutes.

> 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.
This makes no sense to me. I tell them the pickup point so they don't need to know where I am since I already told them where I want to be picked up.
Conversely I found it very frustrating they didn't (used to?) take destination into account. Example: I want to go south. They should arguably prefer drivers that are north of me. Instead I'm just guessing they just ping all drivers within some range. Some of those drivers are south of me. In a city like SF that can end up adding 5-10 minutes to the wait because they may have to go 3-6 long blocks around to get north of me so they can go south AND so they can pick me up on the south bound side of the road.
It requires no GPS data from me to know that. It only requires that I enter where I want to be picked up and where I want to go.
I suppose it's possible I'm waiting on the north bound side even if I want to go south. Maybe they could ask "we'll pick you up on the south bound side. Ok?" or something to that effect.

I think there's a lot of variance between people, and it's largely a matter of preference. Some people are happy to walk a block or two in order to make the most efficient trip depending on where the driver is approaching from and where they're going, and some people just want to plop it down and not think about it and have the company/driver figure out how to come exactly to them and figure out which way to go.

I always feel like an oddball for calling my driver to make it more convenient for him (and faster for me) to pick me up. I usually Lyft line it though, so it's just a time boost (price is the same either way).

For Uber and UberEats I now manually manage these in Android (which I do for a few other apps I have lower trust for).
Which means I shut off all permissions between uses, and I block all notifications.
I grant Location, only as needed to get a driver or place an order.
Once I'm in the car, I turn airplane mode on, deny all permissions and notifications, and I reboot the phone.
Isn't it crazy that this is where we are now. Invasive tracking has become so normal that I have to manage the access an app has in such a tightly constrained way.
I'm starting to think a 2nd device that I leave turned off 99% of the time would be an easier way to sandbox apps I don't trust.

No taxis in your area? Maybe a central phone number you can call to hail one? Why Uber and all this trouble?

My guess is because Uber is subsidising the ride and providing convenient bill paying options.

I'm in London, and public transport is good enough for most journeys, and I loathe black cabs far more than I feel anything (except distrust) about Uber.
Uber works wherever I am in London, it's cheap enough (realistic compared to black cabs).
It's good enough, but not good enough that I'm fine with their various invasive activities. One not mentioned elsewhere is how they use both rider and driver mobiles as a kind of distributed cache/database. Which is the thing that started me off on "kill the background process", initially to spare my own data and battery.

Have you tested any automation apps for Android like Tasker [1] and Automate [2] for doing all this automagically?
[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.dinglisch....
[2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.llamalab.a...

Both look nice, but it also looks like neither can manage app-level permissions (enable/disable Location) and preferences (block Notifications)

I think there are some plugins for doing that, for example
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.intangible...
This requires the super-sensitive WRITE_SETTINGS permission, which must be granted manually.

That's basically what I do. I have a spare phone with a pay as you go number that I give out and use for other services that want my number. It's basically a dedicated spam phone/number.

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.

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.

There's also the "god view" scandal which Uber definitely did get sued for (there haven't been similar lawsuits against Lyft) https://www.buzzfeed.com/johanabhuiyan/uber-settles-godview

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.

Lyft engineer here, so bear in mind any bias, but we take account and data privacy very seriously, and have a data privacy team which focuses on these kind of issues.
From where I stand, we have great engineering and product talent. Perception is tricky - I see that we're very agile with (sometimes far) fewer resources, from the view I have.
I'd be glad to dig into the auth issues you ran into if you're able to ping privately with a few more details.

It's hard to prove falses like that, but Lyft doesn't appear to have such verbiage in their TOS.
I'd hate to be proven wrong about that, but grateful if I was.

> 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.

As soon as they did that I stopped using Waze. My battery life also improved significantly as a result.

On iOS at least - the (current versipon of the) Lytf app specifically asks " … to access you location while you use the app." Uber _used_ to have a "while using the app" location option, but the recent update took this away so you choice is either "Never" give it location info, or "Always".

It's in the app permissions!

It doesn't change anything, but as the Uber engineer above lists, they have rational reasons for wanting it.
I just don't have any rational reason to want to give it to them, so I'll be disabling GPS entirely. But I've mostly stopped using them anyway - the scummy corporate behavior bugged me, but not enough to boycott. And then a driver nearly physically attacked me over, as best I can tell, mishearing something (although I'm not really sure). Those combined, along with a general dislike of the gig economy and I've already mostly ditched them - Uber feels somewhere between sketchy and icky to me. Used them once in the last ~6 months, when the Lyft app forgot my password and it was late.

> Uber collects your location data from the time of trip request through five minutes after ends trip ends, including when the app is in the background. We do this to improve pickups, drop-offs, customer service, and to enhance safety.
Meh, sounds reasonable as long as they don't collect data outside this window (although they should not make it all-or-nothing, a third option of "While in use" would be better).

"While in use" is exactly what they used to do. It allowed the driver to see my location as long as I left the app open. Now the uber app is unreasonable. It demands permission to stalk me at any time, else I use a hobbled version of the app.

The problem is that there is no user-facing setting that can say, 5 minutes only. So going from 5 to 10 to always becomes a decision that can be taken without informing the user at all.

This is how the Overton Window shifts.
Trouble is, now I have to walk 5 minutes in the opposite direction before turning around and meeting my dealer / going to the brothel / whatever you don't want posted on paste bin.
Another issue arises when a "bug" records your location for 5 hours instead of 5 minutes.

Yup, which is a strong possibility for Uber. I had an Uber charge me for a ride that continued for 12 hours after I had been dropped off. Uber had no problem billing me >$300 for this. If they don't have safeguards in place for questionable fare collection, they surely don't have safeguards in place for questionable data collection.

I'm not saying that didn't happen but it makes zero sense. The user chooses a destination and the app tracks where the driver is so it's reasonable to assume if the driver got within 100 meters of the destination the ride ended within 1-2 minutes of that time. They should just pad by 1-2 minutes and then assume the ride ended.
In fact they could make it the exception not to end it by sending a "How was the ride" message to both driver and customer and they both have to pick "Not finished" for it to continue.

Can you manually Force Stop the Uber app to avoid this as a somewhat-awful workaround?

On a rooted Android I use Greenify for all apps that I don't want running while I'm not using.
Without root, you could force disable the app when not using, but you would have to re-enable it manually.

It's a very reasonable reason. It sounds like something that would be reasonable to expand the APIs on the OS to allow and enforce.

I ranted about this last weekend. No app, positively no app, gets "always" access to my location info. I don't care what their "privacy policy" says.
I'm annoyed Apple even allows this. It shouldn't even be an option.
Clearly iOS needs more fine tuned permissions. I can share my location with a friend for an hour. I'd Uber wants 5 minutes worth then they should be granted 5 minutes worth. Not infinite and unlimited.
Uber used to work just fine with "while running" permission. They're removal of that is extremely user hostile. I deleted the app and will use Lyft instead. I suggest everyone do the same.
Waze also made a similar change. Waze also got deleted. We must not accept this behavior.

One thing iOS shouldn't allow is for apps to pick this all or nothing user setting. Apps should be forced to deal with user changing the location setting from always to only while using. If its an option in the OS , app developers, especially big ones like Uber will build for that experience.

Agreed! You should be able to give access to GPS only when running the app, I really do not like the All or Nothing policy. After all, there is no reasonable reason to justify the use of any phone resources when not using the app. In my phone Waze keeps using the GPS even if I kill the app and even after a fresh restart! I obviously deleted Waze now, but not without regret. :-(

Agreed. I deleted Waze yesterday and set Uber to "Never" until they fix this.

This 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.

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.

The Product Manager's bonus probably depends on timely release of new features.

I live in NYC with a lot of one-way streets, including my home. I actually use two different addresses for my home depending on whether I'm being picked-up or dropped-off. Otherwise, when being dropped off, Uber has sent me on some really odd detours just to get me exactly in front of my house. Instead, I'd rather get dropped off at a corner and walk 200 feet.
In theory, by collecting the location data 5 minutes after, they can get a sense of this where and to whom this happens, and automatically correct for it. I don't know if it'll work, but if it does, it'll definitely be a benefit to me.

This is exactly the kind of application that the data is going to be used for.

Says Uber.
Unfortunately - based on their history - you're working for an utterly untrustworthy company, no matter the smiley face of nice they're trying to paint themselves nowadays.
This is not directed against you. I appreciate that you're hanging in here and participate in the discussion.

They don't care about stupid routing. Uber in Chicago routes through alleys ALL THE TIME, but trying to talk to Uber support about this is a dead end. My home address is a street address, but Uber moves the pin to the alley.

That's a fair point, and I've lived in NYC briefly to know that it is indeed annoying to see the driver do circling around in traffic to get exactly to the door.
You can use AI to solve it, or you can give the user power to tell the driver that he/she is willing to work a little bit. A simple button may have been suffice

But why wouldn't you just speak to the driver?

What about in a couple years, when there is no driver? Better getting this working now while there is still the fallback of human interaction...

Generally, that's what I used to do, but a lot of drivers are now so dependent on the GPS that I have to give street-by-street instructions.

In iOS, most apps request your location "Always", "While Using the App" or "Never". I had Uber set to the second; that option is now gone. It's always or never. Set it to never; this makes their app less usable, but that just nudges me to use Lyft, Juno, et cetera.

This makes the app flat out not work for me. I just get blank panes top and bottom.
https://s11.postimg.org/by249fhsz/IMG_1459.png

Yep, I've got exactly the same yesterday until Uber asked me to grant "Always" location tracking. Not only I dislike the forceful location grant but they had a bug that didn't prompt me for it until I rebooted the app twice :)

Can you set it to never, set it to always while using it, and set it to never when the ride ends?

Yes. And I've been doing this for the past week (Uber integrates better with Concur, which we use for expense reporting). I finally reinstalled Lyft, but I just don't take personal rides that often.

Putting aside all the other arguments regarding privacy, ethics, etc, I have a more acute issue: battery life. I allow almost no app "Always Using" privileges on location because of battery drain. I saw this update on Uber yesterday and now i've had to literally turn on and off Location services altogether when using/not-using Uber to prevent potential battery drain.
Over the weekend, now I need to run a test to see how Uber performs on the "24 hr Battery Usage" stats with Location always on. That is a lot of work for a retail device, but I'm also so dependent on Uber now (gave up having a car!)...

I can't say I'm heartbroken that Uber disabled my account after my card on file was replaced (thanks Home Depot!) and I didn't update it. This wasn't even tied to requesting a ride, I think I'd opened the app to see what coverage in a suburban area looked like.
IIRC the "get my account back" process was going to involve sending a copy of my drivers license and the dead card which had been cut up several months earlier, and it just wasn't worth the hassle of even following up.
And this was even before all the "all your ride of shame are belong to us" brouhaha - so now they want to track your walks of shame as well?

Why 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.

If you described 2016 to me in 2004, I'd call you a paranoid lunatic, yet here we are. I'm starting to realize that many of the "alarmist" voices [1] of that time were, in fact, optimistic.
Thinking about what's considered "alarmist" today makes me fear for the future.
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/14/opinion/you-are-a-suspect....

Any you trust them (as a company) that they'll "only track you for 5 minutes after using the app", and you trust each of their staff members will have controlled/secured/audited access to only the 5 minutes location data after a trip, and you trust them to never deploy a production bug in their tracking code, and you trust every law enforcement or business partner request for that data including gag-order-backed-NSLs.
And that's OK - if you're good with that. Now go and ask some women you know whether they have all that trust? Or minorities. Or activists. If you were a Muslim or Mexican in the US right now - do you suppose you'd be happy leaving an Uber app with "Always" location tracking permission on your phone past Jan 20th? If you had a close friend legally and peacefully protesting the pipeline in North Dakota right now and you knew they used Uber - would you be checking that they know this?
I reject the position that because _you_ don't really care, that it's OK to "accept" this. Even though _you_ don't care, tell Uber you do not accept this because of what it means for your sister or friends or coworkers or neighbours or your allegedly "freedom loving" society...

It's worth noting that if Uber accidentally started collecting location data from every rider's phone in perpetuity while they're not on-trip, it would be a very big problem for Uber. That's an absolutely ridiculous amount of data and would easily overwhelm the service. You wouldn't have to worry about NSLs because the data centers would be a fiery mess of steel and silicon. Even if they weren't, the data is overwhelmingly not useful for anyone at Uber (how many hours of "sleeping at home" worth of data points could ever be used?), and it would be destroyed because it's a giant waste of resources.
Uber is big, but not that big. You're already volunteering your location for the service (by being in a car tracked by Uber), this simply adds a small margin of data at the end of the trip.

Efficiently storing and analyzing vast amounts of data isn't very difficult these days - esp if the data is something that they can monetize.

>And that's OK - if you're good with that. Now go and ask some women you know whether they have all that trust? Or minorities. Or activists. If you were a Muslim or Mexican in the US right now - do you suppose you'd be happy leaving an Uber app with "Always" location tracking permission on your phone past Jan 20th?
The NSA already has the ability to track cellphones, regardless of what Uber does with their app.

Unless you are using open source phone with your own built chip, Apple and Google may be tracking you without you knowing right now.
How do you know your neighbor are not actually government agency spying on you?

What I find funny are the people that accept it when it's a Western company doing it, but then freak out with it's a Chinese company doing it (especially when they don't even live in China).

I'm having a hard time reconciling what your problem with this actually is. Firstly you seem to be implying that Uber is going to track you indefinitely (because reasons), and that their dangerous mass-murdering drivers will use this to do something nefarious. Then it's "the guvmint" who you seem to think can't track you already using any of the 5 million other ways your smartphone advertises your exact location, and is now relying solely on a ride-sharing app to know your whereabouts.
And then what? Women, Muslims, and Mexicans are now being targetted? By who? Why? What's going to happen to them? This has been a thing since January, so presumably there's already been at least a dozen abductions?
I don't care about this because there I have no reason not to trust Uber with knowing my approximate location for a few minutes. So no I won't be educating my friends and family on stranger danger, nor will I be explaining to them how Uber is going to get them abducted by G-Men.

This mindset is exactly what is destroying democracy around the world.

I'm dumb, you're going to have to be a bit more explicit here and tell me how Uber knowing my rough location for a few minutes leads to election fraud, or whatever else it is you seem to think is undermining democracy here.

This from the company who recently settled a fine with the A.G in New York for uasge of its "god view" tool:
"Uber and New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman have reached a settlement over the company's "God View" tool, which allowed employees to access and track the location of Uber riders and customers without obtaining permission."
http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/6/10726004/uber-god-mode-sett...

Yeah REALLY obnoxious. I was just disabling this after another Uber ride. They do not provide the option to enable location services only when the app is running on screen. I think it might be nice if iOS presented this option regardless of what Uber wants.

> I think it might be nice if iOS presented this option regardless of what Uber wants.
I delete any application that requires all-or-nothing location privileges; if Uber acts this way now I'm done using Uber.
Being able to make it such that location services are an all-or-nothing proposition when there is clearly support for "only when using" in iOS annoys me to no end. The fact Apple doesn't do this is what is actually alarming, given their stance on "privacy".

>>I delete any application that requires all-or-nothing location privileges; if Uber acts this way now I'm done using Uber.
This is the calculated risk Uber is taking. Presumably they believe that they will only lose a tiny sliver of their user base over the all-or-nothing approach. Now that they're well past the "early adoption" phase in many markets this is a "smart" corporate play.

I am aware of the strategy behind Uber's move. My comment above is "count me out".
I doubt they'll lose even 1% of their installed userbase over this change.

On one hand I agree with you, but it wouldn't work as a unilateral policy. There are definitely apps (such as a weather widget, for one example) that lose major functionality if you don't allow location even when not technically in the app. Either way, I won't be using Uber anymore for this reason.

I switched to Lyft because of this.

I denied permission to location as soon as this change happened with the intention of enabling and disabling before each ride.
It's now more convenient to use competitors apps, though, and i haven't actually used uber since the change.

I wrote to Uber a week back or so regarding this and this how they responded:
My name is Pratik from Uber support, I hope you doing well ! Sorry to hear about about your experience.. I completely understand that this wasn't the experience you expect with Uber. We are constantly working to improve the Uber experience and your input is crucial to doing so. I’ll pass this along to the appropriate team. Thanks again!
----
There wasn't a response upon posting a comment to their blog regarding the same.

That's the bullshit response they give you to anything that isn't solvable with a ride credit.

Uber is somehow ridiculously bad with giving directions. Despite manually entering the address for a number of places, Uber insists on directing drivers into unmarked alleys instead of onto the street outside. You know, the actual street that's named in the freaking address. Instead of invading their customers' privacy they could start by just using the information they've been given.

How to delete your Uber account: https://help.uber.com/h/24010fe7-7a67-4ee5-9938-c734000b144a

I actually noticed this - iOS has this nice feature of giving warnings like "Uber has been tracking your location", which was a WTF moment for me because I haven't used Uber that day at all. So in response I've cut its location access completely.
I've also had a similar experience with Waze. WTF are these apps doing with my location while I'm not using them?
Btw, for all the badmouthing I've given Apple and iOS over the years, this is one feature of iOS that I like. But I would have preferred the option to force location tracking only while using the app.

I was going to say that you can choose to only allow access to your location while using the app, but then I checked in iOS. Some apps only have the choice between always and never. Is it up to the developer to remove/put in the option "While Using the App"?

Isn't it reasonable to want a taxi service that doesn't track its customers beyond 1 single ride? For example, a regular taxi paid with cash?

I'm fortunate enough to have a small taxi service that operates near me. I probably spend more but I like their API: call the phone number and get a ride.

What about using m.uber.com with a browser that sandboxes location data requests effectively?

"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" -- Uber.
Is this legally gray, or am I paranoid?
Not-scary Interpretation 1: Uber collects location data from t_0 to t_1 regardless of whether or not the app is in the background.
Scary Interpretation 2: Uber collects location data from t_0 to t_1 and when the app is in the background.
I'm surprised they didn't start doing this 4 years ago.
Location data is really fucking good data to have on people, which is why I would rather not be giving it away willynilly. Additionally, Uber's service is one of the few services where getting this data can be justified and seems less creepy.

The situation is getting serious in general. There are many many apps that people use daily. How can one find out what data is being collected per application? It would be really nice to a have a web site where the community (technical people who can inspect the apps) could maintain this information per application and a user could see a simple green/red bullets and decide whether the app is worth it or not. Really, really high level, designed for end-user (non-technical).

F-Droid shows a list of antifeatures[0] along with the description of each application. Here is one example with the "tracking antifeature": https://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=at.tomtasche.rea...
[0] https://f-droid.org/wiki/page/Antifeatures

I 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.

There is, but only if you update apps in iTunes on your computer instead of directly on your iPhone.
Basically, update the app in iTunes (which will send the old IPA package (which is still signed to your Apple ID) into the Trash / Recycle Bin, then connect your iPhone to your computer and sync to replace the old app with the new one. You’ll still have the old IPA package in your computer’s Trash / Recycle Bin, so if you ever need to downgrade to the older version of the app, just move it out of the Trash / Recycle Bin, delete the newer version of the app in iTunes, and then double-click on the old IPA package to have it open in iTunes. Then, you can just connect your iPhone to your computer and sync.

There is no chance whatsoever that I'm going to give Uber access to my location while not using the app, so this just makes it harder to me to be a customer.

Ethics. I'm not sure when ethics will matter again. We almost need a movement from startups that promise certain ethics. It would be a refreshing change.

There was an episode of the american version of the "modern Sherlock Holmes" TV series, "Elementary", where the plot revolved around a company akin to Uber (called Zooss in the show). It was particularly illustrative of how tempting it can be for internal employees to abuse that type of data. Among other things Sherlock was able to requisition a large fraction of the company GPS tracking data for his murder investigation. As a side effect he was able to figure out who was having an affair, who was going for an interview at a competitor's company, etc.
5 minutes after drop-off is quite enough to uncover where you meant to _really_ go if you gave a close-by address, in these scenarios.
That's pretty much what the OP meant with "So your secret rendezvous may not be so secret" but it's particularly poignant in a TV show.

I noticed this in the past two weeks - as a result, if I use Uber, I toggle it on, and afterwards I turn it off. This is pretty crappy, I don't need an app punishing my battery by default just so they can collect more data.
It really makes me think twice about sticking with Uber.

Uber also charges significantly different prices between users.
My friends and I did a test and each time, I keep getting charged at least $6 more.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMm4ehc7oCw

That's clever of them. Perhaps your elasticity of demand is lower.

I was a huge fan until now. I'm really disappointed that they pick and choose who they think should pay more for the same ride.

I'm not. It's called "price discrimination" and if you don't do that at your business, you should. Whenever you hear a fun story about enterprise pricing, that's what it's talking about. Mobile phones make it more specific.

Uber is really a scummy company. And given their track record with absuing user data, I don't trust them at all with this new expansive data collection effort. Let's review the company shall we?
The CEO, Travis Kalanick, has used God View to monitor people for entertainment.[0] The head of their NYC office also go into hot water over using God View inappropriately[1]. At other companies, these would be fireable offenses. No second chances. Deactivate the counts. Escort them to the door. Mail them their stuff. At Uber, it's totally cool brah.
There's the whole "you're not our employee, but we pay you, and tell you where to go, and how to act."
They explicitly target low income people to be their totally-not-employees, through direct mail, and their "urban" "Get your side hustle on!" commercials.
Their auto financing product is predatory.[2] It explicitly targets people bad credit to lease a car they can't pay for unless they're constantly totally-not-employed-with Uber. The interest rates are usury levels of 22.75% APR.
Then of course there's the whole, "Fuck the law!" aspect of the company.
[0] http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/10/03/god-view-...
[1] https://www.buzzfeed.com/johanabhuiyan/uber-is-investigating...
[2] http://www.marketplace.org/2015/05/13/tech/uber-drivers-stru...

I take issue with your summary. You forgot arrogant and douchy antics, documented in interviews, personal accounts, and other places.

When I visited them, I found the company was full of very young, very naïve, kool-aid drinkers.

In android you can prevent apps from sending mobile data to the cloud in the background. Go to Settings > Connections tab > Data Usage, and scroll down to the app. There's a 'restrict background data' checkbox.

So they'll just record the data in the background and send it when the app is in use.

I agree, quite possibly, although not all developers are as competent as you'd hope / fear

I'm not sharing my location with Uber anymore on my iPhone App. Pretty simple.

Devil's advocate:
I had an Uber driver drop me off in a sketchy alley three blocks from the location I specified, but because he barely spoke a lick of English I had trouble communicating that it wasn't my stop.

How many stars did you give him?

You can choose to report that.

They already had the data showing where he dropped you off, what do you think they're going to do with the extra data?

See where guests are dropped off, and where they go right afterwards such as if they're cutting trips short or being dropped off too far.

I think they are doing this also to stop riders/drivers who game Uber. Riders walking patterns post-ride can be also used for predicting return pickup locations for concerts etc.

Please forgive my ignorance, but do most hackers leave their phone's GPS antenna turned on most of the time?
And do most hackers update all their apps automatically? I generally do a "broad" update once or twice a year. And I update specific apps as needed (or desired). I would have assumed most hackers would do these kinds of things. It's like putting a tape "lid" over your webcam and only taking it off when you want to use it. Isn't it?

re: Uber's reasoning one thing to keep in mind: this is the last opt-in user privacy hurdle for Uber.
From here, any change Uber or an acquirer make doesn't alert or ask users. always-on location tracking is ring0 of personal privacy. They can remove that 5 minute monitoring window any time with an app update.
Question isn't 'do I trust what Uber say to justify this change', but 'will I trust Uber to protect my privacy and security forever'

I am asking myself, if this could mean, we can "kill" Uber in Germany for good. Our data protection laws state, that you are only allowed to track the necessary data to provide the service.
Tracking users after the use a service is imho not really encompassing the spirit of the law.
Surely Uber lawyers could state that this is necessary information for making the service better for the user - like always.
Non the less - one more reason not to ever use a service provided by this company.

Not just Germany, I'm pretty sure this is an EU wide directive. For sure it's the it works in Ireland (where thankfully Uber has not had any success).
So Uber must have some view on why this does not contravene that directive, I doubt they have not considered it.

Am I the only one who thinks this is actually a very small amount of additional data to give up, and don't mind doing it? I'm willing to accept there's a small chance it might make the service a little better for me.
They already know exactly where I came from and where I'm going, what could I possibly do in the 5 minutes after getting dropped off that would reveal significantly more information?

Great reason to use their Web app instead of the native one - same functionality, and no such worries.

PrivacyGuard and Orwall prevent applications from using the internet/GPS without your express authorization. Anyway if you want absolute privacy toss your smartphone in the trash can, cancel your contract with your ISP, commit social suicide and go live off the grid.

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 privacy. There's no excuse for lemon technology that exposes every intimate detail of our lives.

... 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.

I am already slowly inching toward this, I removed Internet access from my home, and don't use any smartphone applications at all.
I have not seen any adverse effect on my life/productivity from doing this, people overestimate the amount that they actually need these services. In reality they mostly amount to useless appendages. Especially in an era with free wifi nearly everywhere, being on grid/off grid is as simple as whipping a laptop out of my bag and turning it on.
Persistent connectivity is not a need.

I am very irritated with this update, it is so unnecessary and iOS is complaining about the location access as well.
I dont see any possible use of tracking the location after the ride except tracking the users location and create a surge pricing out of it.

Just wondering, are there virtualization/sandboxing apps/solutions that would let me create full emulated mobile environments into my phone and control all the sensor data that the environment is seeing?

Another possibility is to keep a dedicated phone for Uber. Turn it on only when needed. Not sure how practical it would be, though.

Set to Never. Hum, I think I will give Lyft a try now. Never bothered to before.

Quick check on my iPhone shows that it allows for (and is set to) "While Using the App" for location access settings. Running latest iOS release.

Just uninstall the app after you get your ride, and reinstall it next time you need it.

And I'm switching to Lyft

Won't this drain the battery, with Uber's app running in background?

Just lost me as a customer.

Me as well. A step to far for my liking.

Privacy-by-design now is more important than ever, this is why we build on this with https://snips.ai

"Uber now discloses it does this"

I voted with my wallet and deleted Uber from my phone. My little contribution to the world.
And wrote a message to my friends that I did so, and why they should consider it.

According to the permissions request dialogue, "...We [want to collect your data even after you're dropped off] to improve pickups, drop-offs, customer service and to enhance safety..."
I don't buy any of it. Here's why:
IMPROVE DROP-OFFS: The most improved drop-off that Uber can deliver is the one I, the passenger, gives them, either verbally to the driver, via GPS by them noting the point where I was dropped off, or via GPS by me entering my destination location. Normally, I ask to be dropped off where it's most convenient for me, and the most convenient for me is the best drop-off experience possible. Even if after being dropped off, I go to a final destination for which Uber reckons a better drop-off point than the one I chose exists, it's not for Uber to say, based on where I am going, what my best drop off point is. That's for me, the customer, to say. Since when does a cab tell you where to drop you off? Unless I don't know where I am going, in which case Uber already knows what the best drop off point is, and has no need to further improve it.
IMPROVE PICKUPS. Presumably, the pickup will be improved based on historical location data, which tells them, this guy actually goes/lives/drinks/et here, something we know coz we tracked him last time he used Uber. Again, when I board a cab, I go to the point of most convenience for me. I'd probably have a cab come right to my bedroom door inside my house if it were possible, but since it's not, I choose the next best possible point, which is normally the same place they dropped me off at if they're the ones who brought me here. Same argument applies: unless I'm a stranger, my choice of pickup point is the best pickup point experience possible, and needs no further improvement. If based on where I'm coming from, Uber reckon there's a better pickup point, it's not for them to say. They're a cab. A cab comes get you where you want it to come get you, the location of your bedroom door and other laws and issues permitting.
CUSTOMER SERVICE: This sounds tenuous. Nothing that I can think of that can be termed as good customer service from a cab company would be improved by tracking my movement after the cab has dropped me off. Some good customer service issues have nothing to do with my location, and the two that do are the ones I've discussed above.
ENHANCE SAFETY. Again, tenuous without more explanation. How does knowing where I go after you drop me off enhance safety either for myself or the driver?
I've seen a comment from some who says they work at Uber saying that this helps to figure out where the pick up spots for each address are, that a large building may have multiple points where people get picked up or dropped off. Which sounds reasonable, until you realize that the point that I got dropped off is the best one for me, which is why I chose it, and you, Uber, already know that because you've just dropped me off. Tracking me AFTER dropping me off doesn't make your knowledge of my best drop off more accurate, it makes it less accurate since I'm moving further and further away from the best drop off point as you continue to track me.

> Normally, I ask to be dropped off where it's most convenient for me, and the most convenient for me is the best drop-off experience possible.
Big brother knows best, surrender now, you'll be assimilated.

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