“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,” Mike Isaac reports for The New York Times. “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,” Isaac reports. “The reason? So Apple would not find out that Uber had secretly been tracking iPhones even after its app had been deleted from the devices, violating Apple’s privacy guidelines.”
“But Apple was on to 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,” Isaac reports. “‘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.”
“For Mr. Kalanick, the moment was fraught with tension. If Uber’s app was yanked from the App Store, it would lose access to millions of iPhone customers — essentially destroying the ride-hailing company’s business. So Mr. Kalanick acceded,” Isaac reports. “In a quest to build Uber into the world’s dominant ride-hailing entity, Mr. Kalanick has openly disregarded many rules and norms, backing down only when caught or cornered.”
Read more in the full article here.
“Isaac of The NYT conceded over Twitter that a number of other companies engage in similar, if not the same, practices,” Eric Lieberman reports for The Daily Caller. “‘This is a typical way to prevent fraudsters from loading Uber onto a stolen phone, putting in a stolen credit card, taking an expensive ride and then wiping the phone — over and over again,’ a representative for Uber told The Daily Caller News Foundation. ‘Similar techniques are also used for detecting and blocking suspicious logins to protect our users’ accounts. Being able to recognize known bad actors when they try to get back onto our network is an important security measure for both Uber and our users.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Obviously a violation or violations of Apple’s App Store policies that somehow got past Apple’s reviewer(s) for inclusion in the App Store.
Isaac reports that Uber geofenced Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino to prevent Apple from reviewing Uber’s code. That worked until Apple engineers outside of Cupertino looked at Uber’s code and found the “fingerprinting” infraction. Duh.
This won’t help Uber’s well-earned reputation for sliminess.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews readers too numerous to mention individually for the heads up.]