Uber Secretly Tracked Users, Spied On Lyft Prompting Tim Cook To Threaten Apple Store Expulsion

zerohedge.com / by Tyler Durden / Apr 23, 2017 5:40 PM

Almost two months after it was revealed by the NYT that Uber had used a deceptive tool called “greyball” to deceive and circumvent official authorities, CEO Travis Kalanick may be in trouble again following a new expose by the NYT’s Mike Isaac (who may ot may not have a grudge against Kalanick) writes that in 2015 Uber was “on the verge brink of implosion” after Apple had learned that Uber was spying on its users.

Below is the key excerpt in the comprehensive profile which is a must read for anyone seeking more insight into the motivations of the CEO of the world’s most valuable private company:

The idea of fooling Apple, the main distributor of Uber’s app, began in 2014. At the time, Uber was dealing with widespread account fraud in places like China, where tricksters bought stolen iPhones that were erased of their memory and resold. Some Uber drivers there would then create dozens of fake email addresses to sign up for new Uber rider accounts attached to each phone, and request rides from those phones, which they would then accept. Since Uber was handing out incentives to drivers to take more rides, the drivers could earn more money this way.

To halt the activity, Uber engineers assigned a persistent identity to iPhones with a small piece of code, a practice called “fingerprinting.” Uber could then identify an iPhone and prevent itself from being fooled even after the device was erased of its contents. There was one problem: Fingerprinting iPhones broke Apple’s rules. Mr. Cook believed that wiping an iPhone should ensure customers that no trace of the owner’s identity remained on the device.

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