Uber Now Tracks Passengers’ Locations Even After They’re Dropped Off

Re:Uber Now Tracks Passengers’ Locations Even After They’re ... by buro9 on Friday December 02, 2016 @07:06AM (#13087918)

For Uber and UberEats I now manually manage these in Android (which I do for a few other apps I have lower trust for).

Which means I shut off all permissions between uses, and I block all notifications.

I grant Location, only as needed to get a driver or place an order.

Once I'm in the car, I turn airplane mode on, deny all permissions and notifications, and I reboot the phone.

Isn't it crazy that this is where we are now. Invasive tracking has become so normal that I have to manage the access an app has in such a tightly constrained way.

I'm starting to think a 2nd device that I leave turned off 99% of the time would be an easier way to sandbox apps I don't trust.

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Re:Uber Now Tracks Passengers’ Locations Even After They’re ... by skeptic2718 on Friday December 02, 2016 @07:08AM (#13087933)

No taxis in your area? Maybe a central phone number you can call to hail one? Why Uber and all this trouble?

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Re:Uber Now Tracks Passengers’ Locations Even After They’re ... by SixSigma on Friday December 02, 2016 @07:10AM (#13087942)

My guess is because Uber is subsidising the ride and providing convenient bill paying options.

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Re:Uber Now Tracks Passengers’ Locations Even After They’re ... by buro9 on Friday December 02, 2016 @07:12AM (#13087950)

I'm in London, and public transport is good enough for most journeys, and I loathe black cabs far more than I feel anything (except distrust) about Uber.

Uber works wherever I am in London, it's cheap enough (realistic compared to black cabs).

It's good enough, but not good enough that I'm fine with their various invasive activities. One not mentioned elsewhere is how they use both rider and driver mobiles as a kind of distributed cache/database. Which is the thing that started me off on "kill the background process", initially to spare my own data and battery.

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Re:Uber Now Tracks Passengers’ Locations Even After They’re ... by pawadu on Friday December 02, 2016 @07:39AM (#13088091)

Have you tested any automation apps for Android like Tasker [1] and Automate [2] for doing all this automagically?

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.dinglisch....

[2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.llamalab.a...

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Re:Uber Now Tracks Passengers’ Locations Even After They’re ... by buro9 on Friday December 02, 2016 @08:00AM (#13088194)

Both look nice, but it also looks like neither can manage app-level permissions (enable/disable Location) and preferences (block Notifications)

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Re:Uber Now Tracks Passengers’ Locations Even After They’re ... by pawadu on Friday December 02, 2016 @08:36AM (#13088400)

I think there are some plugins for doing that, for example

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.intangible...

This requires the super-sensitive WRITE_SETTINGS permission, which must be granted manually.

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Re:Uber Now Tracks Passengers’ Locations Even After They’re ... by uiuiuop on Friday December 02, 2016 @08:18AM (#13088289)

That's basically what I do. I have a spare phone with a pay as you go number that I give out and use for other services that want my number. It's basically a dedicated spam phone/number.

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