That Story About Uber Tracking People After They Deleted The App? Yeah, That's Not Really Accurate

from the let's-try-this-again dept

Have you heard the story about how Uber was tracking ex-users even after they had deleted the app from their phone? You'd have to be living under a rock to have missed it. It came from a fascinating NY Times profile of Uber's CEO/founder Travis Kalanick and is the opening anecdote, and then it started spreading like wildfire across social media.

Travis Kalanick, the chief executive of Uber, visited Apple’s headquarters in early 2015 to meet with Timothy D. Cook, who runs the iPhone maker. It was a session that Mr. Kalanick was dreading.

For months, Mr. Kalanick had pulled a fast one on Apple by directing his employees to help camouflage the ride-hailing app from Apple’s engineers. The reason? So Apple would not find out that Uber had been secretly identifying and tagging iPhones even after its app had been deleted and the devices erased — a fraud detection maneuver that violated Apple’s privacy guidelines.

But Apple was onto the deception, and when Mr. Kalanick arrived at the midafternoon meeting sporting his favorite pair of bright red sneakers and hot-pink socks, Mr. Cook was prepared. “So, I’ve heard you’ve been breaking some of our rules,” Mr. Cook said in his calm, Southern tone. Stop the trickery, Mr. Cook then demanded, or Uber’s app would be kicked out of Apple’s App Store.

This has created lots and lots of headlines all over the place, claiming that Apple kept tracking ex-Uber users after they'd deleted the app. And some even whining that Apple "let" Uber get away with this with no more than a verbal scolding. The most egregious of these is Andrew Orlowski, over at the Register, who has never found a story about a tech company he couldn't totally misreport to make the company look worse. Here, he claims: Uber cloaked its spying and all it got from Apple was a slap on the wrist. Others just claimed that Uber was "tracking users even after they deleted the app."

Except, if you actually read what the NY Times said it notes that what the company was doing was an anti-fraud detection. Did it break Apple's rules and go too far? Yes, absolutely. Was it bad? Probably. Was it tracking users who deleted the app? No, not at all. Again, there are plenty of legitimate reasons to dislike Uber or to dislike its business practices or its management. But that's no excuse to oversell a story that already looks bad. Uber clearly broke the rules and used a fairly sketchy maneuver to track phones to prevent fraud -- but that's not the same as tracking users who deleted the app. Wired has a pretty clear summary of what actually happened:

Fingerprinting, in and of itself, has plenty of non-invasive uses. Uber, for example, deployed it to help prevent fraud. Being able to identify when a device reinstalls a particular app helps developers spot phones that are, say, bouncing around the black market. In Uber’s case, fingerprinting kept drivers, especially those in China, from gaming a promotion that rewarded them for maximizing ride volume. The company discovered that some drivers were buying stolen phones, creating dummy Uber accounts, and using those phones to call for rides.

When someone uninstalls an app that uses fingerprinting, it leaves behind a small piece of code that can be used as an identifier if the app is ever reinstalled on the device. For the iOS App Store, Apple originally permitted developers to keep track of their users over time using a broad Unique Device Identifier (UDID). Beginning with iOS 5, though, Apple scaled this back, because of the potential privacy implications of giving developers permission to individually ID users even after their app had been uninstalled. Instead, Apple turned to more limited mechanisms, like advertising IDs and vendor IDs. These still give developers the ability to do fraud defense, but with less leeway for potential privacy abuse.

Uber took it one step further, which is to say, one step too far, using application program interfaces designed to access data like an iPhone’s device registry and Apple-assigned serial number.

Again: this is not excusing what Uber did. It clearly broke Apple's rules, and using this kind of fingerprinting can have some problematic consequences for privacy. And, yes, because everything Uber does seems to come included with some secondary component that makes even reasonable actions look bad, the company geofenced Apple's headquarters to try to try to hide the fact that it was doing this. That seems like a pretty blatant admission that the company knew it was breaking Apple's rules. It just doesn't mean that the company was tracking you after you deleted its app.

I certainly understand that there's a long list of actions by Uber that make people not trust the company. And that's completely valid. But if you're going to attack the company, it should be for the bad actions that the company actually did, rather than the exaggerated and misleading descriptions that start spreading across social media.

Filed Under: deleted, fraud, press coverage, tracking, travis kalanick
Companies: apple, uber

Lawyer Sues Basically All Mainstream Media For RICO Violations For How They Report On Donald Trump

from the yeah,-that's-not-going-to-work dept

If you do a Google search on Roy Den Hollander, as I just did, you may discover that basically every result is a story about some absolutely ridiculous lawsuit he has filed. There was the time he sued a nightclub claiming that requiring him to buy a $350 bottle of vodka was a human rights violation. Or the time he sued a bunch of night clubs for violating the 14th Amendment by having "Ladies' Nights." Or the time he sued Columbia University for offering women's studies courses. Or the time he wanted to file a lawsuit to force women to register for the draft. And these are all stories from just the first page of Google results (or following links from those stories). But, you get the idea.

And now he's back with a new lawsuit. He's basically suing the entire mainstream media claiming that how they report on Donald Trump is a RICO violation. No, really.

This is an action against the above named defendant news reporters and commentators (“Reporters”) for violating the civil Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1961 et al., (“RICO”) by repeatedly committing the racketeering activity of wire fraud, 18 U.S.C. § 1343, when they (1) create and cause to be broadcast and disseminated false and misleading news reports concerning the Donald J. Trump candidacy for President of the United States (“Trump Candidacy”); (2) provide commentary based on a false set of facts or fail to reveal the alleged factual basis for the assertion of their judgments; and (3) lobby on various news-talk shows in furtherance of their opposition to the Trump Candidacy.

And to think, I'd been looking for an opportunity to point people to Ken "Popehat" White's Lawsplainer entitled IT'S NOT RICO, DAMMIT:

Would it be RICO if . . .

NnnnoooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

via GIPHY

. . . .

No.

But how do you know? I haven't even described the case yet.

It's never RICO!

I mean, not literally never. But I can say with a very high level of confidence that if you're asking me, it's not RICO.

But it's an important case! And the facts are terrible! This defendant did really bad things.

That's not what RICO means. RICO is not a fucking frown emoji. It's not an exclamation point. It's not a rhetorical tool to convey you are upset about something. It's not a petulant foot-stomp.

RICO is a really complicated racketeering law that has elaborate requirements that are difficult to meet. It's overused by idiot plaintiff lawyers, and it's ludicrously overused by a hundred million jackasses on the internet with an opinion and a mood disorder.

There's more at that link. You should read it if you ever wonder if a case is a RICO case.

The lawsuit prattles on and on, but it's not RICO. And, of course, it's not going anywhere, because of the First Amendment. And, honestly, the court might as well just say "No, go away" and point to the First Amendment, but instead will be forced to waste it's time in writing up a more comprehensive explanation for why the media reporting, no matter how much you disagree with it, is not breaking the law.

Filed Under: donald trump, journalism, press coverage, rico, roy den hollander

Why Does The Press Have To Keep Fixing All Of Comcast's Screw Ups?

from the sisyphean dept

By now you probably know the drill: Comcast will do something incredibly stupid, and a customer that has been struggling to get the company to fix it for a year (or longer) will have absolutely no luck getting the issue resolved. They'll subsequently contact the media out of frustration and (especially if the screw up goes viral) Comcast will finally resolve the problem -- usually within a day. The company then trots out claims that this is simply an "anecdotal" experience and not representative of the great care and skill with which it manages its beloved customers. Rinse, wash, repeat.

The latest story of this type comes from a Comcast customer of eight years who was incorrectly over-billed for service by the cable company. Not recognizing its own error, the company also sent collection agencies after the customer to obtain money never actually owed them. And, as always, the user attempted for eighteen months to get Comcast to realize its screw up to no avail:

"I called Comcast a total of 10 times beginning 5/31/2014 and wasted at least 10 hours of my life trying to fix a problem that they created,” Mueller told Ars. “In making those calls I was hung up on, transferred, and dismissively told to just wait it out.” The problem was seemingly fixed in November 2014, yet almost exactly one year later Mueller got a letter from another collection agency. More calls to Comcast this month didn’t fix the problem immediately, and Mueller contacted Ars out of frustration."

A problem that never should have happened in the first place? Check. Apathetic and incompetent support? Check. Being forced to contact the press in the hopes somebody can light a fire under Comcast's ass? Check. It's not hyperbole to state that this sort of thing happens weekly in news outlets all over the country, and the negative public sentiment and press generated by this incompetence lambada was a big reason regulators scrapped the company's attempted acquisition of Time Warner Cable. Even magician and top Comcast lobbyist David Cohen couldn't fix what was broken.

Of course, as the story always goes, once the press was contacted it was a trivial problem for Comcast to fix:

"It blows me away that the burden is on me to fix their mistake and that it is taking so much of my resources,” Mueller told us. “I really would like to bill them for my time.” Mueller was also worried the collection agencies' involvement would harm his credit rating. After talking to Mueller, we reached out to our contacts in Comcast’s public relations group on Thursday last week. A Comcast spokesperson researched the issue, and the very next day someone else from Comcast called Mueller to tell him that the problem was fixed for good."

Why, after a decade of stories like this, is the press still responsible for fixing Comcast's screw ups? Because Comcast customers are either too lazy to switch, or don't have an adequate TV or broadband service to switch to. And as the industry continues to consolidate into just a handful of players (AT&T buys DirecTV, Charter buys Time Warner Cable and Bright House), the incentive to compete on both fronts decreases further as geographic dominance grows. These giant, publicly traded companies then usually look to customer service budget cuts first when trying to please Wall Street with relentlessly better quarter over quarter results.

To be fair, after the merger fracas Comcast is trying some new support tricks, though whether they'll ever materialize as wholesale improvements is uncertain. In Portland Comcast is experimenting with a pilot program that tries to reach out to customers before problems are even detected by them. This is all being spearheaded by a "Customer Experience" VP who was hired last year with one, full-time purpose: to stop Comcast from sucking.

The problem is, no matter how many times this pattern has repeated over the last decade, Comcast never seems to get any better at its job. Claims that it recognizes its own dysfunction and promises to improve are now a yearly phenomenon for Comcast, yet customer satisfaction studies never budge. It's pathetic that it takes press intervention to routinely fix fairly basic mistakes that balloon into legendary annoyance; if Comcast can't get its household in order perhaps it can start paying those folks (be it Reddit users or the media) who keep having to play the middle man.

Filed Under: broadband, customer service, press coverage
Companies: comcast

The FBI Is Offended That It Isn't Allowed To Control How The Press Portrays Its Deceptive Activities

from the poor-james-comey dept

The last few weeks have revealed a bunch of deceptive practices by law enforcement -- mainly the FBI. First, there was the revelation that the FBI had impersonated an online news story to install malware in trying to track a high school bomb threat. Then, there was a story from a couple of weeks ago about the FBI turning off internet access at some luxury villas in Las Vegas, and then acting as repair technicians to get inside and search the place (while filming everything). That was a story we had hoped to cover, but hadn't yet gotten to it. However, after the NY Times editorial board slammed that operation, FBI Director James Comey wrote a reply defending the FBI's "use of deception."

First, Comey defends the fake news story, noting that it was perfectly legal... under "Justice Department and FBI guidelines at the time." As Scott Greenfield notes, this is the "Nixon answer" to questions of illegality by the executive branch:

By Comey’s hand, he defines lawful as approved by the Department of Justice and FBI. To put this less tactfully, it’s lawful if he says it’s lawful. It’s the executive branch Nixon answer, that the president can commit no crime because he’s the president.

Comey also defends the practice because it worked, as if that's the justification needed:

In 2007, to solve a series of bomb threats and cyberattacks directed at a Seattle-area high school, an F.B.I. agent communicated online with the anonymous suspect. Relying on an agency behavioral assessment that the anonymous suspect was a narcissist, the online undercover officer portrayed himself as an employee of The Associated Press, and asked if the suspect would be willing to review a draft article about the threats and attacks, to be sure that the anonymous suspect was portrayed fairly.

The suspect agreed and clicked on a link relating to the draft “story,” which then deployed court-authorized tools to find him, and the case was solved. No actual story was published, and no one except the suspect interacted with the undercover “A.P.” employee or saw the fake draft story. Only the suspect was fooled, and it led to his arrest and the end of a frightening period for a high school.

Except, of course, all sorts of illegal and privacy-invasive investigative techniques may work to catch criminals, but we don't allow them, because of the impact on everyone else. That's what the whole 4th Amendment is about. And basic concepts like protecting privacy. Yes, we'd catch more criminals if the FBI had mandated microphones and cameras in everyone's house, but we don't allow that because it goes too far. The fact that "it works" makes no comment on whether or not it's appropriate or legal.

As for the Vegas sting using fake internet technicians, Comey's response there is even more pathetic, chiding the press for reporting on public filings in the court case before the Justice Department has responded:

The Las Vegas case is still in litigation, so there is little we can say, but it would have been better to wait for the government’s response and a court decision before concluding that the F.B.I. engaged in abusive conduct.

Marcy Wheeler has the best response to that, highlighting how the FBI, in this very same case (but it's also true in lots of high-profile FBI cases) put out press releases that only gave its side of the story, and claimed things as fact that were misleading and inaccurate -- but didn't seem to have any problem with the press taking its one side of the story without considering the response from the accused:

Jim Comey thinks the press shouldn’t report on this until after the government has had its shot at rebuttal? Does he feel the same about the army of FBI leakers who pre-empt defense cases all the time? Does Comey think it improper for his FBI to have released this press release, upon defendant Wei Seng Phua’s arrest, asserting that he is a member of organized crime as a fact and mentioning a prior arrest (not a conviction) that may or may not be deemed admissible to this case?

According to the criminal complaint, Wei Seng Phua, is known by law enforcement to be a high ranking member of the 14K Triad, an Asian organized crime group. On or about June 18, 2013, Phua was arrested in Macau, along with more than 20 other individuals, for operating an illegal sport book gambling business transacting illegal bets on the World Cup Soccer Tournament. Phua posted bail in Macau and was released. 

I didn’t see the FBI Director complaining about press stories, written in response to the press release, reported before the defense had been able to present their side.

And, so, apparently, not only does the FBI director think it's proper to use deceptive practices if "it works," he also thinks that the press should only report on the FBI's side of the story, furthering the deceptive practices with what's effectively propaganda. The use of deception by law enforcement is already questionable enough. Asking the press to be a willing participant in that deception is simply ridiculous.

Filed Under: deception, deceptive practices, doj, fbi, james comey, journalism, press coverage