Discussion: Reporter: Sources Warned Me Uber Employees Could Track People

Discussion for article #230329

Uber-conservatives are always talking about how the government spies on people. Well the government does not have the resources that a Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter or Uber have.

Control of the media and private communications are threatened more by private interests than any government agency.

Having said that, I AM a capitalist, I just think that sometimes we DO need regulations.

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Until the court order arrives from the shadow court system that approves close to 100% of government requests.

I self regulate. If you find my real name on the net, it is me. There isn’t another with the same name. Because of that, I don’t use social media and I don’t use my name in any online forums. That limits the info available to casual snoopers, at least. I don’t have a need to hide from the government, fortunately, and I just have to assume that I’m not of much interest to criminal hacker groups.

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Yeah, but unless you’re using a proxy or vpn, your IP address is still identifiable.

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Uber and Lyft appear to be real scumbag organizations.

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Not too dissimilar a situation as yours-- but even as an IT pro, web admin, etc–
I simply refuse to participate in social or business networking medias.
I’ve been online since the early 90s and can safely assume I have a large digital footprint professionally.
Though there’s little getting around purchasing goods and services online.

The problems I envision will entail companies whose policies might appear ‘strictly business’-- though whose internal policies are far more lax-- as it is with Uber.

Unless the offended start filing suit?
There’s not a damn thing that can be done about it-- other than bitch.

jw1

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agreed - it’s surprising how freaked out people are about government spying and how unfreaked out they are about the much more rampant corporate spying.

it seems a real '60s posture to believe that government is the enemy and abuse of government power is what we must ward against at all costs. i can see where this comes from from those who lived through that era, and certainly the possibility of it being true always exists. but in my lifetime the enemy and the vast majority of corruption of our democratic process has come from corporate power, against which the government holds little sway. anyone who’s really interested in pursuing power these days doesn’t go into government - they go into the corporate world.

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It is possible to watch every keystroke of your thought process. Not to mention the ability to go back and look everything up. It used to be that only messages going beyond US borders was swept. Now, it is all swept and available.

Someone should start a competing service called Umlaute…
Anyway, from the Dictionary of Lost American Concepts:
fi¡du¡ci¡ar¡y
fəˈdo͞oSHēˌerē,-SHərē/
adjective
Law
adjective: fiduciary
1.
involving trust, especially with regard to the relationship between a trustee and a beneficiary.
“the company has a fiduciary duty to shareholders”

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Read recently that 90% of the world’s data has been created in the last 2 years.
Astounding.

jw1

Unlicensed, unregulated, random people who you use your cell phone UBER app to contact, pay, and then drive you around town can track you and use that data? WHO KNEW?!?!?!

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Data security specialists

Anyone who is hired for a specific task can be called a specialist.

That’s the only credential here: employment (at Uber).

“Internal audit reveals everything is great,” says internal report.

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It is almost amusing the uproar over this app or that company tracking people, and the outrage over the NSA, when in reality this has been going on as long as there have been advertisers, spies and the ability to communicate. Of course we are being tracked Google, Facebook, Nordstroms, all of the GD fliers that come in the mail because you have subscribed to the newspaper, filled out a coupon or bought a car.

It could be worrisome if it were new, or it was 1984, (although Big Brother is growing up) and or everyone continues to be naive enough to be surprised that it is happening who have not had the sense to pay attention to where they put their information.

We live in an era of profit over people, propaganda being more important than actual facts. Every byte of info will be vacuumed up and used for the profitable purpose of the vacuum machines. We need to be aware, be careful and prudent about the information we share and not trust there is such a thing as confidential, secret or secure.

Sounds like they play pretty fast and loose with their own rules. Obviously, their execs have no problem with breaking the rules and lying.

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This is always the grand contradiction: government power is always suspect while that of private power is seen as benign.

Granted, the government can put you in jail or take away your property but only through due process.

However, the increasing use of technology, in mostly private corporate hands, can be as much of a threat as that of government, especially when private power exercises itself covertly.

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Shorter Uber: “Trust us!”

I find Android’s tools to control access to my location information totally inadequate. It is not enough to ask my approval as a condition of installing an ap, I should be able to install the ap while denying access to location or other info. It is not enough to have a software switch to deny access to location information to all aps except google aps. I should be able to approve or deny location information every time an ap asks for it, based on current context. So in something like an Uber ap, it is obviously valid for the ap to ask for my location when I request a ride, but not while I am riding. It’s almost as if Google Android was designed to make the controls so blunt and general as to make them useless.

Then again since Google wrote Android, every control just might be a placebo; flip the little picture of a switch any way you want, your private information is still shared, it’s just that if you choose “off” it will be shared behind your back, and if you choose “on”, Google will tell you with every ad and ap how much they know.