When I was getting ready to leave for work today, I got out of the shower and grabbed my phone and saw a alert saying Uber has been using my location in the background. I hadn't opened the app since last week, last time I needed a ride. I'm sure it could've just been an errant push notification coming in late and waking the app up in the background, but I'm spooked.
I think the pop-up is telling me it was using my GPS, especially since the GPS icon on the Settings page where you can retract the permissions was lit up to indicate "Recently used".
I don't want to jump to conspiracy theories but the experience scared me a bit because it was around the exact same time of day I had grabbed an Uber to go to work the last time I had used it.
Perhaps it was an errant random notification meant to scare me, perhaps it was a late delivered push notification opening Uber in the background, perhaps it was Uber seeing if I was home and wanted to commute to work again.
Uber would like to access your location at all times
[Yes, allow in the background]
[Yes, only when open]
[No, deny all together]
Now I'm from a third-world country and can't afford to buy a $1000 phone every year, so I have to be careful with the life of my phone.
The turnaround this, I found, is to disallow location to the Uber app when not using the app and allowing access only when I use the app. This, however, is a pain and the Uber app behaves weird if I do so (the previous trip does not end after hours of it actually ending).
Very poor UX from Uber, potentially dangerous, definitely unethical. This is definitely a trend -- startups start with being caring of its customers, but once they grow big, they become callous and even malicious when it comes to users (I don't ask of them to give every customer personal support, but not mis-using customers is the least I can expect).