Apart from Google being an investor in Uber?
Uber has what's pretty close to a monopoly in what it offers, apart from a few cities in the US where Lyft also operates. I would say most people that user Uber are not interested in using the regular local taxi service.
This reputation is definitely damaging, and it's common knowledge here. Drivers bitch about it. They recommend Lyft.
But like, Uber is in 230 cities around the world. Here in Australia I believe they added over 1000 new drivers over the past month. Here, Uber is the alternative. There is no Lyft or Sidecar - mainly because alternatives are too scared of legal action from government - ridesharing is essentially illegal here, but Uber plays the we're-waiting-for-the-law-to-catch-up card regardless.
If the analysis holds up, it would be very bad publicity to appear complicit.
The original article is down, but do they somehow bypass the Android permission authorization process? Or the user still has to authorize the app to access all the resources?
The issue is that they're phoning all this information home, when the user might only be expecting it to be retrieved while the app is in use and only as needed.
You're deluded. If you don't like this, stop using Android. I did.
- Accounts log (Email)
- App Activity (Name, PackageName, Process Number of activity, Processed id)
- App Data Usage (Cache size, code size, data size, name, package name)
- App Install (installed at, name, package name, unknown sources enabled, version code, version name)
- Battery (health, level, plugged, present, scale, status, technology, temperature, voltage)
- Device Info (board, brand, build version, cell number, device, device type, display, fingerprint, ip, mac address, manufacturer, model, os platform, product, sdk code, total disk space, unknown sources enabled)
- GPS (accuracy, altitude, latitude, longitude, provider, speed)
- MMS (from number, mms at, mmss type, service number, to number)
- NetData (bytes received, bytes sent, connection type, interface type)
- PhoneCall (call duration, called at, from number, phone call type, to number)
- SMS (from number, service number, sms at, sms type, to number)
- TelephonyInfo (cell tower id, cell tower latitude, cell tower longitude, imei, iso country code, local area code, meid, mobile country code, mobile network code, network name, network type, phone type, sim serial number, sim state, subscriber id)
- WifiConnection (bssid, ip, linkspeed, macaddr, networkid, rssi, ssid)
- WifiNeighbors (bssid, capabilities, frequency, level, ssid)
- Root Check (root staus code, root status reason code, root version, sig file version)
- Malware Info (algorithm confidence, app list, found malware, malware sdk version, package list, reason code, service list, sigfile version)
Or, put differently, I really don't see any reason for Google not to immediately remove this app from the store permanently and ban whatever developer uploaded it. There should probably be legal action.
Edit: I've augmented the various types of data retrieved (ie: there is capability in the source to read, save and transmit this data) from the inauth framework sources.