Forum Overview :: Crazy Taxi
 
What a shitty, shitty company. by Johnny Fivedicks 04/24/2017, 5:59am PDT
I've luckily not placed Uber on my new phone. But I can't imagine having this garbage on a device of mine ever again.

Uber broke Apple’s privacy rules in its iOS app in an effort to catch Chinese fraudsters, resulting in chief executive Travis Kalanick being hauled in to Cupertino for a personal dressing down from Tim Cook, it has been revealed.

Apple prevents developers from identifying specific iPhones for privacy reasons, arguing that a phone that is completely wiped and resold should have no links to its previous owner; to that end, in 2012, the company stopped allowing apps on its App Store to access information like the “Unique Device Identifier” (UDID) and similar identifying information.

But in an effort to prevent a particular type of fraud in China, where scammers load up stolen credit cards to make fake rides before wiping the phone and repeating the process, Uber broke Apple’s rules, according to a New York Times profile of Kalanick.

The company even went to the effort of adding code to its app so that any user opening it inside Apple’s Cupertino headquarters wouldn’t see the rule-breaking code.

That didn’t prevent Apple from discovering the subterfuge. In the meeting, Cook reportedly told Kalanick, “I’ve heard you’ve been breaking some of our rules,” and threatened to pull Uber’s app from the App Store if the company didn’t remove the fingerprinting feature.

According to security researcher Will Strafach, who analysed a version of Uber’s app from 2014 in response to the story, the company was using a chunk of code normally exclusive to Apple itself to pull iPhone serial numbers out of the device’s operating system. Those serial numbers remain the same, even if the entire rest of the device is wiped and reinstalled with a new user account. Even if Uber hadn’t been spotted by Apple, the technique no longer works: as of the most recent version of iOS, apps cannot discover the serial number this way.


I wish that they had removed Uber from the App Store.
PREVIOUS NEXT REPLY QUOTE
 
Uber seems like a terrible place to work. by Johnny Fivedicks 02/26/2017, 9:09am PST NEW
    Yet another reason to push back against Uber lobbying by Silicon Valley 02/26/2017, 1:52pm PST NEW
        Some context by blackwater 02/27/2017, 1:44pm PST NEW
            Well, their SVP of Engineering is gone, semi-related to this by Kenny Mayne 02/27/2017, 3:36pm PST NEW
                Recode is just a pawn, not a player here. by blackwater 02/28/2017, 11:54am PST NEW
                    "Self-drivibg cars will be safer!" by Johnny Fivedicks 02/28/2017, 2:58pm PST NEW
    Women that have been in software dev for 10+ years: "This happens literally NT by everywhere." 02/26/2017, 1:59pm PST NEW
        Corollary: 35+ yrs this literally didn't happen everywhere NT by Concentration and fragility 02/26/2017, 3:29pm PST NEW
            You're a woman with 35+ yrs of engineering experience? by Ryn And 02/27/2017, 8:27am PST NEW
                Re: You're a woman with 35+ yrs of engineering experience? by I am 02/27/2017, 11:28am PST NEW
                    Thank you for everything. NT by Johnny Fivedicks 02/28/2017, 2:59pm PST NEW
    Re: Uber seems like a terrible place to work. by Oom Shnibble 02/28/2017, 11:40am PST NEW
    What a shitty, shitty company. by Johnny Fivedicks 04/24/2017, 5:59am PDT NEW
        Re: What a shitty, shitty company. by Johnny Fivedicks 04/24/2017, 7:12am PDT NEW
    UBER CEO MAKES DUBIOUS CLAIM OF ALMOST WORLD RECORD AT WII TENNIS by Rafiki 04/27/2017, 10:23pm PDT NEW
 
powered by pointy