
Uber Doesn't Want You to See This Document About Its Vast Surveillance System - ryan_j_naughton
http://gizmodo.com/uber-doesn-t-want-you-to-see-this-document-about-its-va-1795151637
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balladeer
I have two ride hailing apps installed on my phone (iOS) - Ola Cabs and Uber.

In "Privacy > Location Services" I see "Always" location request from Uber but
"While Using" for Ola Cabs. So my only option for Uber is to set location
services to "Never" and then either manually enter the address or give the
permission and then revert it to "Never" after booking.

I googled aound and I see it's clear that they had a choice:

[self.locationManager requestWhenInUseAuthorization] [self.locationManager
requestAlwaysAuthorization]

I really feel unconfortable when apps ask such blanket permissons for Contact,
Location, SMS (on Android; I'm very new on iOS), files, microphone etc.

Facebook on the other, at least on Android again, had every permission request
listed in their app (uninstalled and never installed again in last 4-5 years).

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rogerdonaldson
This is pretty much normal for any tech company.

In fact, Uber has very little data on their users (it is limited to trips
taken on their platform) -- a company with more digital services like Google,
Facebook, Apple etc have humongous amounts of data on their users. Even small
companies which are in the ads industry have lots of info on users using
third-party cookies.

