Uber Customer Tracking Draws FTC Complaint

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It has been almost a week since anyone filed a police report, complaint or lawsuit against Uber. Thankfully a complaint has been filed with the FTC just in the nick of time. Whew! I was starting to get worried. ;)

Uber Technologies Inc. shouldn’t track customers when they aren’t using the ride-sharing application, according to a complaint filed with the Federal Trade Commission on Monday by a digital-privacy group. While Uber states that location services may be disabled to prevent the app from gathering location data, the complaint says that “Uber can still collect location information through the phones’ IP addresses.”
 
“Uber can still collect location information through the phones’ IP addresses.”

So can everyone else but its pretty broad down to only the city.
 
Good.

Next target: every app in the Google/Apple/Microsoft store

Thank god for XPrivacy; however, trying to prevent apps from leaking all of your data and spying on absolutely everything should not require the amount of effort that it does. IMO, it shouldn't even be legal for apps to do this in the first place.
 
Interesting.

What kind of control do they have over when an app wants to connect to the Internet? I am on a 2G plan with Verizon and I get within' 1% of going over every month. I know I don't do much with my phone Internet wise, so I suspect things are still running in the background. I do have updates set to only update on WiFi though. I only watch videos when I am on WiFi as well.

This seems like something I need to install. Time to go root my HTC One M8 now I guess.
 
Interesting.

What kind of control do they have over when an app wants to connect to the Internet? I am on a 2G plan with Verizon and I get within' 1% of going over every month. I know I don't do much with my phone Internet wise, so I suspect things are still running in the background. I do have updates set to only update on WiFi though. I only watch videos when I am on WiFi as well.

This seems like something I need to install. Time to go root my HTC One M8 now I guess.

You can definitely restrict app internet access with XPrivacy. But if that is all you want to do I would also look into firewalls. Check out AFWall+, which I believe is the successor to DroidWall. Both of these allow selectively blocking internet access based on the type of connection.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=dev.ukanth.ufirewall
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.googlecode.droidwall.free
 
How is this just an Uber problem? If you own a cell phone, you're pretty carrying a data collection platform with you at all times no matter how many custom roms or snake oil privacy apps you install.
 
Interesting.

What kind of control do they have over when an app wants to connect to the Internet? I am on a 2G plan with Verizon and I get within' 1% of going over every month. I know I don't do much with my phone Internet wise, so I suspect things are still running in the background. I do have updates set to only update on WiFi though. I only watch videos when I am on WiFi as well.

This seems like something I need to install. Time to go root my HTC One M8 now I guess.

Definitely needs to look into your usage. Could be an app or you get a lot of email/surf/Maps a lot?

I use under 1GB per mo consistently with a HTC One (M7), my primary usage is personal/work email, messaging (very little mms) some web (but usually only when waiting on other stuff). I would consider myself a light user.
 
How is this just an Uber problem? If you own a cell phone, you're pretty carrying a data collection platform with you at all times no matter how many custom roms or snake oil privacy apps you install.

Indeed. By owning a smartphone you basically are a gold mine of data.
 
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