Roger Fingas
Fresh off revelations of the ridesharing service's run-in with Apple, Uber is being sued for the use of an app called "Hell," which allegedly tracked drivers from the company's main U.S. rival Lyft.
Uber violated the California Invasion of Privacy Act and the Federal Wiretap Act, and engaged in unfair competition, according to plaintiff Michael Gonzales, who drove with Lyft when "Hell" is said to have been in action, TechCrunch reported. Gonzales is pursuing the case as a class action through the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, and asking for $5 million in damages.
The Hell app, detailed by The Information, supposedly let Uber see how many Lyft drivers were available in an area, what they were charging, and even which ones were also driving for Uber — in that case, giving Uber the ability to push incentives that could keep drivers exclusive.
Only a handful of people at Uber are said to have been aware of Hell, among them CEO Travis Kalanick, a few other executives, and some data scientists. The app was allegedly discontinued in early 2016.
Recently a report claimed that in 2015, Apple CEO Tim Cook personally spoke with Kalanick over Uber's collection of UUIDs from iOS devices, threatening to kick the company's app out of the iOS App Store. While Uber was trying to prevent people from creating multiple fake accounts to claim new account bonuses, collecting hardware IDs is a violation of Apple rules.
Uber has repeatedly run into concerns about abusing data. It has used another tool, "Greyball," to deliberately avoid picking up government authorities in cities where it may not have permission to operate. People within the company have also been accused of stalking journalists, celebrities, and ex-lovers.
Malcolm Owen
Wesley Hilliard
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
15 Comments
Kalanivk is a border line criminal, and just a bad human being. Now that I posted that comment I probably will never be able to hail an Uber ride again.
We get it...the tech media has a hard on for painting Uber as evil.
I don't typically take such extreme tunnel vision views on issues like this. For instance:
1. If it is against Apple's rules for Apps to collect UUID's of iOS devices, why is possible to do with a simple app submitted to the App Store? I know all about how they deliberately tried to get around Apple's rules by geofencing Cupertino and making that behavior not work in that locale, in hopes of defrauding the testers. But that doesn't answer the question of why it is possible for an App to even access the UUID in the first place? Uber found an efficient way to prevent loss and abuse of their own app, and they employed it. The only thing they did 'wrong' was violating Apple's rules and then deliberately hiding it from them.
2. When Uber was being lambasted over their App tracking a user's location after the ride had ended...the tech media refused to even acknowledge how the entire Uber product revolves around location tracking, and you're going to begrudge them additional location data once your ass is out of the car and it doesn't serve your interest any more? Seems pretty absurd. Users give up ridiculous amounts of location data to other apps for the dumbest reasons imaginable. They choose this to get upset about. Even though Uber made a strong case for why the data is valuable...not so they can know where John Doe is 20 minutes after his ride, but to aggregate information on the behavior patterns of demographics using Uber, to better place drivers in the future, to make the service even more reliable. Are people already not even impressed when they pick up their phone needing a ride, and there is a Uber 5 minutes away? Heck, I'm still pretty impressed.
3. How is the Hell app anything but brilliant? Assuming it is using publicly available information and they are not hacking Lyft to get the data.
4. I'm unclear how Uber could possibly "not have permission to operate" anywhere. What government bureaucrat is sitting on that? Well, obviously the ones they refuse service to.
5. "People within the company have also been accused of stalking journalists, celebrities, and ex-lovers." This is not a company policy or practice so it just a meaningless slander when voiced like this in the context of company doings.
I don't really know why I'm defending Uber here...maybe because I see them as one of the few actual good ideas to come along in the last decade, and I can smell a media smear campaign from a mile away.
Bye Uber. By this time next year you will be gone.
I looked on the AI article and on Techcrunch (no subscription to The Information), but I still fail to understand how Uber got Lyft drivers (or got into Lyft's servers) to run this app/tracking/whatever. Can someone explain?