Uber Wants To Track Your Location Even When You're Not Using the App, Here's Why (businessinsider.com) 131
With the most recent update to Uber's ride-hailing app, the company has begun requesting users if they are willing to share their location data with Uber app even while the app is not in use. The company says it plans to use the data gained to improve user experience -- including offering improved pick-up times and locations. From an article on Business Insider: In August the company moved away from using Google Maps for its service and began using its own mapping technology. Google's lack of accuracy in many non-Western countries led to increased friction between consumers and drivers. This means the company needs to boost the amount of location data it has. Location data could also be used to provide new channels of revenue for the digital platform. This could include serving ads of local businesses or recommending nearby places of interest to users. Mobile marketing, which relies on accurate location data is a rapidly growing industry and could serve as a revenue windfall for Uber in the years ahead as it faces increasing competition. In fact, revenue from location-targeted mobile ads is expected to grow at an annualized rate of almost 34% between 2014 and 2019, surpassing $18 billion, according to a forecast from BIA/Kelsey.
Why not? (Score:2)
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I agree, doing maps themselves is also a great plan, it worked out well for Apple.
Re:Why not? (Score:4, Insightful)
:::deletes the Uber app:::
Re: Why not? (Score:4, Insightful)
Sounds like overkill. Currently I have it to set to 'While Using', but if this changes to 'Always' -- which is really annoying -- then I will disable location services for the app and enable it only when needed. Given that I use Uber infrequently, this is fine. Incidentally I already do this with Waze, which makes perfect sense to me because I don't have a car so my location info doesn't help other users.
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Everybody should disable location services for everything they're not actively using and of course only enable it for things where doing so serves them. Leaving location services on all the time is simply giving away valuable data for free, and can lead to all kinds of unforeseen complications later.
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If the NSA required people to have location services on all the time, people would pitch a fit, yet when an app does it, it's a Good Thing
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Evidently, no. That's what you would assume something known as "ride-sharing" would mean, but neither Uber or any other so-called ride-sharing company thinks so. They ALL are a taxi-service over the internet, but don't want to follow any of the taxi regulations.
I think one of the companies actually did finally roll out a sub-service that actually is ride-sharing, it was basically car-pooling organized over the internet.
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They decided that their vetting procedure is better than the Nation's passenger vehicle licensing requirements, so stopped requiring their drivers to have passenger vehicle licenses.
The Land Transport agency has put them straight there.
The are trying to operate in a very competitive environment (in my city) and if they're not cheaper than the current over supply of taxis, then they're not going to get much business.
The only time I've been
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Yup.. Since I'm retired, I was thinking about driving part-time for Lyft/Uber.. After discovering that I had to get THREE FUCKING BUSINESS LICENSES, one state,one county and one city, for a total out-of-pocket of close to $500/YEAR!, plus the wear/tear on the car and gas, I'd be making close to $12 WHOLE DOLLARS/HOUR..... FUCK UBER!
Re: Original premise of Uber. (Score:1)
How about "Fuck greedy governments!"?
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Now I have a Motorola I inherited from my wife, since my HPE decided it will only pay for employee cell service, not the handset (WTF). It makes it more difficult and automatically flips on all the location services. I can't find a good app to toggl
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What could possibly go wrong?
I was visiting a city where I knew Uber operated so I thought "Hey I'll give this a go!", installed the app. It wanted me to enter my credit card details into the app before I could use it. Uninstalled app, hailed a cab.
Enter credit card details in the actual app as a requirement to use the service? What could possibly go wrong with that?
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prepaid CC FTW
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Which is something you can easily just create if you find yourself in a city you're not familiar with and just need to get somewhere once.
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Or you could simply carry cash and be nearly anonymous rather than not-even-close-to-being anonymous with an app.
I know. Simplicity is too simple.
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Or you could simply carry cash and be nearly anonymous rather than not-even-close-to-being anonymous with an app.
I know. Simplicity is too simple.
The Uber app *insisted* on the card details and wouldn't let me use the app without it. Cash didn't seem to be an option.
Cabs seem a lot safer.
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"United States coins and currency (including Federal Reserve notes and circulating notes of Federal Reserve banks and national banks) are legal tender for all debts, public charges, taxes, and dues." Not accepting cash means that the banks take a cut, which means credit card dollars have less value to a creditor than bank notes.
Want to pay Uber in cash? Book a ride to a destination other than where you want to go. When the driver gets there, tell them you'll cancel the ride and pay him cash to take you to
Re: Why not? (Score:1)
I know at least one person who got banned from Uber for "excessive cancellations", which meant two consecutive ones.
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What are you? 70 years old? The great thing about Uber is that you don't need cash. And the driver doesn't need to mess with it either (which keeps him safer).
You must be terribly naive if you trust Uber to hang onto your credit card details forever just in case they ever need to charge you some extra!
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So I guess you never rented a car or a room at a hotel. Who knows? Maybe Mariott decides they need to charge you $10 more to make their quarterly revenue goals!
I think I trust that more than, oh lets see, putting my credit card details into an android app and having that go out to some cloud service.
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/sarcasm
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prepaid CC FTW
PITA
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prepaid CC FTW
https://help.uber.com/h/cf7e93... [uber.com]
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Man, they even want my location (on a desktop) just to visit their help page.
Fuck Uber.
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prepaid CC FTW
Nope.
I tried to use Uber with one. The app let me create an account, but when it actually came time to get a ride, Uber wouldn't take my prepaid. Even though it had several hundred dollars on it, and I had the $20 first-time-user credit, and my ride was only expected to cost $12 (meaning I shouldn't have been expected to pay anything anyway), the app refused to let me book a ride, citing "There is a problem with your card, please use another."
So, I just called a real taxi and paid cash. Then, I uninstall
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how were you expecting to pay?
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how were you expecting to pay?
At the end of the ride.
When I get a cab I pay with my card at the end of the ride and the card stays in my possession.
Uber wants to hold onto your card just in case. Maybe they'll decide you need to pay some 'extra' charges after your ride, maybe the driver puts in a claim that you soiled the car or something. Fuck that.
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It's certainly not in their worst interest to do it. It wouldn't be worth your while suing over it. Multiply that by all the people that use it ...
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Come on, car rental companies - particularly Enterprise - have done this extra charge bit, despite plenty of competition. Eventually Enterprise got nailed ( sued - class action? ), but yeah, since then I do not use Enterprise for car rentals anymore.
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Agreed. They're not going to steal a cent from me if they require a credit card before service delivery. They're not going to get my business.
Actually, where in my country do they have employees? Oh, just the capital and the largest city ; nowhere important. I'll look at the question in another year. Or the next time I use a taxi, whichever comes sooner.
The point of Uber/Lyft (Score:2)
how were you expecting to pay?
At the end of the ride.
When I get a cab I pay with my card at the end of the ride and the card stays in my possession.
Uber wants to hold onto your card just in case. Maybe they'll decide you need to pay some 'extra' charges after your ride, maybe the driver puts in a claim that you soiled the car or something. Fuck that.
You miss the point of Uber (and Lyft and other ride sharing services). The point being you don't have to have your wallet or cards w/ you. Let's say you're taking a walk and decide to visit a friend, something for which you need not have your wallet w/ you. So you reach for your phone, call Uber, get taken to her place, get dropped and don't think about it, once the driver ends the ride. As an added advantage, you don't have to haggle, and can decide whether to tip or not (in case of Lyft - I doubt tha
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The one time I've ever used either Lyft or Uber was when my flight home was super late, and I didn't want to bug the wife to come down to the airport to pick me up, so I grabbed a seat in the terminal, installed the Lyft app from GooglePlay, entered my info, and started the app to get a ride home. The app told me my ride would be at the pickup point outside the terminal in four minutes. I walked out to where I *thought* the pickup point was and watched my driver have to go around the parking structure, as I
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You miss the point of Uber (and Lyft and other ride sharing servies). The point being that they know where you are and sell that for money. TFA has a picture (before their "hey turn off your add blocker" screen comes up) showing the value of location based adds in 2014, and projected in 2019. Guess which one is higher? Remember when Uber went through their data and figured out who went home with someone else after they hit the bar and published a thing on the web about it? Wouldn't it be great if they
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How did you book your plane ticket when you visited the city? Generally you need to provide some sort of payment up front before you get a seat going somewhere, unless grandma is driving.
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Oddly enough, everywhere I do business still takes cash.
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Plenty of places give a discount for cash - you just have to ask for it. Even some big-box stores. They hate those cash-back credit cards because that "cash back" is also deducted, in addition to the regular credit card merchant fees, and there's no way to tell just by looking at the card what, if any, cash back they're going to be hit for.
What - you thought the credit card companies were giving you that money out of their pockets? They're using their duopoly status to gouge retailers.
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Keeping cash on hand is never a bad idea. I never let the cash stash go below $2000. It's well-secured, of course, but it's a nice buffer against shitty weather.
Can you please turn on location services so I can locate that stash of yours?
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If I'm flying it's for business and the business has a car and tickets waiting for me, I assume they use a credit card, but that's not me paying for or arranging those things. It's not that I never use a credit card, I just prefer to use cash.
If I'm visiting my sister that lives about 350 miles away it's faster an easier to just drive. I've never had a reason to fly personally.
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The closest airport is already 120 miles away unless you count little private airports and then after I land I'm 100 miles past my sister's home I may as well drive.
I could probably book a small charter but it would be far more expensive and take almost as long as driving.
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How did you book your plane ticket when you visited the city? Generally you need to provide some sort of payment up front before you get a seat going somewhere, unless grandma is driving.
If Uber have my credit card details they can charge me any time they want for anything they want.
Suppose after I finish my ride the driver puts in a claim that I soiled the car and they charge me another $100 for that. All I can do is go to the credit card company and do a charge back. Fuck that.
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It isn't in Ubers interest to do that. If they did that you would never use their services again and they would be out a lot of money. Believe it or not, not everyone is out to scam you out of $100.
Are you saying its impossible for the driver to put in a claim for a soiled car and for Uber to claw the money back from you? Just totally impossible, never going to happen? Ok cool, you go ahead and use Uber. I'll use a cab and I'll pay by cash.
If Uber allowed paying by cash I bet they'd make more money.
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They would lose the tight control they have over their piecework employees who may decide to do a bit of taxi work on their own.
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Re:Why not? (Score:5, Insightful)
At the END of the transaction is when you provide those details. Not just from simply visiting the airline booking website.
If I can't create an account without providing CC details that service will NEVER get my business. Providing your CC details upon login or account creation is just stupid and riff with all kinds of potential problems. What if the account creation fails? Create my account then once I'm securely logged into my account I'll provide those details, but only then. Asking for those details before those steps have been done means you will never get my money.
I do really hope those Uber/Lyft drivers are getting educated or trained in some other profession though. Not a single one of them will have a job or 2nd income from these ride sharing companies in 10 years.
Yeah its the way Uber wants to hold onto your card details, you know, just in case they decide they ever need to take some more money from you without having to contact you first.
Dodgy as fuck.
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Apparently they don't let you use those now
Possibly because you could register with a card that had near zero money on it, take a ride and their billing would fail...
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What could possibly go wrong?
After all, it's not like Über has a history of abusing customer data.
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I was going to post this. Google, NSA, FBI, and the boy scouts already track me. Why not uber?
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Here's Why (Score:2)
Because I'm tacky! [youtube.com]
Think Nothing of it, Uber! (Score:5, Insightful)
The sole reason I charge my mobile and pay my data plan is so that companies can use me to improve their business plans and profitability while providing me with zero compensation. Let me know if I can do something else to help!
Raymond Chen has a recurring theme on his Old New Thing [microsoft.com] blog of "What if applications other than yours did this?" What would battery life or capped data plans look like if every application felt a need to send location telemetry home all the time?
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Raymond Chen has a recurring theme on his Old New Thing blog of "What if applications other than yours did this?" What would battery life or capped data plans look like if every application felt a need to send location telemetry home all the time?
Well, you are in luck. A fully loaded Samsung Galaxy Note 3 will last up to about 48 hours on a single charge if not actively used. The same phone, with no Google Services, apps, or anything other than a bare metal Android install will last up to about 28 days on a single charge if not actively used.
Heavy usage of a fully loaded Samsung Galaxy Note 3 is roughly 12 hours. Heavy usage (how can this be?) of bare metal Android is about a week.
Idea: revert to the old app (Score:1)
I miss the surge indicator and the "txt me back when the surge is gone" feature. I understand the drunks and the morons don't understand the meaning of 1.9x, 10x, etc. but I think it should be an option the way this is presented.
I haven't used Lyft yet but I'm thinking about it now that Uber has lost its "magic" the edge is gone. Plus having UberPool as the default and no way to remove it is damn stupid.
Re: Idea: revert to the old app (Score:2)
Seems to default to whatever the last service type I used
"Willing to"??? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why the hell would I want to share my location with Uber? Oh, right - "Location data could also be used to provide new channels of revenue for the digital platform. This could include serving ads of local businesses". Yeah, kindly fuck right off, Uber.
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I don't even keep location services turned on except when I need to use my phone as a GPS, never mind allow any apps to access it.
This and bluetooth is disabled unless in the very rare case I'm using it... all it does is run the battery down.
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Re:"Willing to"??? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't understand why you don't put your SSN in your sig. That information is being stored indefinitely by the government, your bank, and your doctor's office, and it's being shared with God knows who. For some reason you're OK with that, but you don't give it out to everyone? Very strange.
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I don't even keep location services turned on except when I need to use my phone as a GPS, never mind allow any apps to access it. Why the hell would I want to share my location with Uber? Oh, right - "Location data could also be used to provide new channels of revenue for the digital platform. This could include serving ads of local businesses". Yeah, kindly fuck right off, Uber.
Uber may be playing shenanigans but other companies can potentially do useful things with that data. As an example, Pandora seems to play certain songs depending on my location or time of day. I have noticed that John O`Callaghan's "Big Sky" seems to play much more frequently around sunset. Driving home from the airport after a business trip almost guarantees a play of Gareth Emery's "Long Way Home". I have no evidence that Pandora is actually changing the songs played based on location or time of day
Battery drain (Score:4)
Isn't that going to be a bit of a battery drain issue? In order to do that, its going to have to constantly be running something in the background checking your GPS.
That being said, Google is already doing this on Android. I know this because I'm constantly getting maps notifications of how long it will take to drive to home/work, unasked. Still, I think it only does that twice a day, and this uber thing seems completely open-ended.
Re:Battery drain (Score:5, Informative)
Isn't that going to be a bit of a battery drain issue? In order to do that, its going to have to constantly be running something in the background checking your GPS.
That being said, Google is already doing this on Android. I know this because I'm constantly getting maps notifications of how long it will take to drive to home/work, unasked. Still, I think it only does that twice a day, and this uber thing seems completely open-ended.
Go to Settings->Location->Google Location History and turn it off. In the event of an account hijacking, the attacker would know where you live, work, drop your kids to school and all kinds of other scary things
Re:Battery drain (Score:5, Funny)
In my case they would know where I work, live and get groceries... I have a boring life.
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Thanks. I may go do just that.
But the point here is that Google already is silently doing this to lots of people. You know...the "Don't be evil" people. Probably others too. Uber's just trying to hitch their own boxcar onto the back of the gravy-train.
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I recently (this month) got an Android phone. The last time I had one it was Gingerbread and I didn't really like it all that much.
One of the "improvements" which kind of freaked me out was when I walked by a place and Google wanted me to review it. I still haven't disabled location services because I am curious to see what all of this information gathering can do for me. For example, the traffic notifications are ok... not super useful to me (I use public transit), but kind of neat, especially the travel t
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I'm not paranoid or worried enough to turn off these services, but if you're really determined, you can use something like Tasker / IFTTT and use either geofencing (kind of against what you're trying to accomplish) or something like Wifi / NFC triggers to determine when to turn on/off services automatically for you.
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Thank you for this.
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Well, we are the product.
It's my 15th wedding anniversary today, and my wife said look at this.
Facebook had without her asking, put together an anniversary congratulation, that included a slide show of engagement photos (from 16 years ago!) and wedding photos!
Scary stuff!
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It's my 15th wedding anniversary today, and my wife said look at this.
Facebook had without her asking, put together an anniversary congratulation, that included a slide show of engagement photos (from 16 years ago!) and wedding photos!
Scary stuff!
What I find even more interesting is that Facebook knew enough to do that for her, but not for you.
Just stop with the bullshit already. (Score:5, Insightful)
"...The company says it plans to use the data gained to improve user experience..."
Oh, enough with the bullshit.
You want this additional telemetry data because you're going to sell it.
You want this additional telemetry data because you're going to sell it.
You want this additional telemetry data because you're going to sell it.
Revenue and Profit are the king and queen of business, so drop the lame-ass excuses for gathering more data already. Shit gets old.
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I don't buy it. (Score:2)
How is knowing my location BEFORE I request a ride going to improve pickup times? Are they just going to have a driver follow me around all the time? This sounds like just a grab for more data and data seems to be the new currency.
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If there isn't a SciFi novel in that, there must be a decent short story.
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I seem to have missed the part where they use data as currency in Blade Runner.
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But Snowcrash?
It Must Be Said (Score:2)
With all due respect, Fuck YoUber!
Uber (Score:2)
"Trust us with your data, because like when were we known to flagrantly violate your laws."
Really? (Score:2)
Another app I won't be installing (Score:2)
At the moment I'm stuck with an old Android phone. Thus, no Whatsapp, no Facebook, no $LATEST_FAD_APP, no Uber app. (I am however able to get some apps from alternative app stores like F.droid.) I can obviously use web apps no problem. Google told me that the mobile site of Uber could be used if no app available, but they need to activate your account for it, which didn't happen: Uber support basically told me: upgrade your phone. Not happening.
In the mean time, the time for my hospital procedure which inv
Uber's app is a lot like my stock investments... (Score:2)
"... And it's gone."