Uber To Turn Into a Big Data Company By Selling Location Data 120
Presto Vivace sends news that Uber has entered into a partnership with Starwood Hotels that hooks accounts from both companies together. If you're a customer of both, you'll get a small benefit when chartering Uber rides, but the cost is that Uber will share all their data on you with Starwood. The article says,
This year, we are going to see the transformation of Uber into a big data company cut from the same cloth as Google, Facebook and Visa – using the wealth of information they know about me and you to deliver new services and generate revenue by selling this data to others. ... Uber can run the same program with airlines, restaurants, nightclubs, bars – every time you go from point A to point B in an Uber, “A”, “B” or both represent a new potential consumer of your data. ... Uber knows the hot nightclubs, best restaurants and most obviously now has as much data about traffic patterns as Waze (which coincidentally trades data with local governments). Combining Uber’s data with the very-personal data that customers are willing to give up in exchange for benefits, means that Uber can, and is, on its way to becoming a Big Data company.
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What's the solution to this? Have every company promise to behave? Decentralisation would work, but that's likely to be at odds with the business interest.
Re:Genius (Score:5, Insightful)
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Easy, the solution is don't use Uber. I am surprised that this is surprising anyone.
This is my complete lack of surprise.
I took one look at the permissions the app needed on Android and figured out that they were collecting data wholesale.
I dont expect them to be nearly as meticulous as the likes of Google in anonymising it. They probably give out your phone number as part of the package and offer to determine your home address for a nominal fee.
Sucks if you're already an Uber fanboy and have given them all your details.
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Yes. You can choose to live as a hermit in a cave. Civilization demands the right to sell your personal information for the benefit of others.
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"Corporation demand the right to sell your personal information for the benefit of others"
Fixed that for you. Remember, civilizations have long existed and thrived without corporations. The last few hundred years are an anomaly.
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And now, things get Ugly. (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, they promised to cut back their sleazebag executives' personal access to that. They might even have been not-lying. Unfortunately, that just meant that they were growing up, and moving into the big-kid leagues of privacy violation. As I said then:
"So, in a predictable (honestly, surprising they made it to this market cap without doing it already) part of the maturation process; Uber is claiming that they'll rein in discretionary access to personal information by their frat-bro-asshole management, and instead put full database access to all the data ever in the hands of their advertising and customer analytics weasels.
That's the unpleasant flip side to a story like this. Yes, as it happens, Uber has some of the most punchable management shitweasels one could ask for. The very idea of one of them using 'god view' on you makes you want to take a hot shower and scrub yourself until the uncleanness is gone. However, while opportunistic assholerly is repulsive, it is also unsystematic. Once they grow up a bit, and put those data into the hands of solid, value-rational, systematic, people who aim to squeeze every drop of value out of it, then you are really screwed."
Well, there we are: 'turning into a big data company' is pretty much the thermonuclear option when it comes to customer privacy; more or less the most invasive thing we yet have the technology to make cost effective. It'll take some real innovating for them to dig deeper.
Re:And now, things get Ugly. (Score:5, Insightful)
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and you don't get a dime for it.
Re:And now, things get Ugly. (Score:5, Informative)
So, in essence, you become the cheapest possible whore.
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Google and FaceBook give you "free" services but take it out of your ass. So yes, you're whoring yourself out to them for cheap.
But with Uber you're still paying for the service. They're not going to start giving you free rides in exchange for mining your data. So you're still getting fucked, but you're paying them for the privilege. That's not a john, either. The john pays for it, but he wants the fuckening.
Is there a word for that even? Where you pay somebody and they unwelcomingly shag you? Only thing I
Re:And now, things get Ugly. (Score:5, Insightful)
Is there a word for that even? Where you pay somebody and they unwelcomingly shag you? Only thing I can think of is "taxpayer."
Nah. I don't know your situation but I get, or have received; roads, schools, fire protection, cheap food, clean water (unheard of in many places in the world), airports, railway travel, national parks, national forests, state forests, public parks, heavily subsidized university education, cleaner air, cleaner water, and public libraries. By pooling my tax money with others I we use our combined cash to create a civilization. Which is why I hate tax cheats and dodgers, they are parasites.
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roads
Awful and getting worse.
schools
!!
fire protection
I'm with you on this one. So that's one thing the Romans have done for us.
cheap food
Ugh. The Future Of Food, pls. srsly.
clean water
Frack that...
airports
Complete with institutionalized sexual abuse
railway travel
There would be more, but the government allowed the automobile companies to buy up and shut down profitable railway and streetcar lines to quell competition.
national parks, national forests, state forests
They spent more preventing people from going there during the "shutdown" than it costs to keep them open. And don't get me started on mismanagement of BLM land, w
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Most of what you complain about is due to insufficient tax revenue or due to Congressional attempts to actually interfere with good governance and good stewardship. As the other poster said, move to a country without a strong government such as Somalia or Mexico. Just watch out for the gangs, militias and death squads. A few taxes are a low price to pay for the benefits of civilization.
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Most of what you complain about is due to insufficient tax revenue
BAHAHAHAHAHAHA
We have enough money to fuck with other nations' politics, bomb brown people, and build jets that nobody needs. You're full of shit.
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And they don't even kiss you first.
Re:And now, things get Ugly. (Score:4, Insightful)
and you don't get a dime for it.
Yes you do. You get discounts on other goods and services. Plus it is opt in, so if you don't want them to share your data then don't opt in.
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Heh, it's opt in for now. Already people don't like this, so it's only opt in at first. Maybe opt out next, and then there is no choice.
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Already people don't like this
People don't like it because they didn't RTFA, and are basing their opinion on the idiotic misleading summary, and the knee jerk comments written by people that didn't RTFA either.
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Is it knee jerk, or is it watching what other companies have done and seeing the inevitable path that a company run by, as another poster put it, some of the most punchable management shitweasels will take in the name of shareholder value?
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Is it knee jerk, or is it watching what other companies have done ...?
Why should you be outraged at Uber because of what other companies have done? Uber is doing nothing wrong here. They are not sharing any data without explicit, informed consent. If other companies are not doing that, shouldn't you be outraged at them? If you really, really want to be outraged at Uber, because of something they might theoretically do someday, wouldn't it make sense to wait until you have an actual reason? The world has lots of actual problems. Wouldn't it make more sense to focus on on
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It's a knee-jerk reaction because you are assuming what Uber will do without any evidence beyond the actions of others. I doubt you'd like being judged by the actions of other people as it would probably be highly inaccurate judgement - the exact same logic applies here.
And yet this is largely how the world works. Good on you if you can completely avoid judging others based on what you have seen entities "like" them do in the past.
Screaming and sobbing about some slippery slope or the actions of other companies isn't helping anyone, let alone you.
Because there is so much screaming and sobbing here. Commenters are simply pointing out that given shareholders, you should expect the company to run rough shod over user privacy if it is profitable. Lying to yourself about this fundamental truth isn't helping anyone, let alone you.
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Heh, it's opt in for now.
Unless Uber achieve actual, literal, world domination, using Uber will always be opt-in.
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Opt in, like the conduit.com PUP-ware that comes with Windows downloads and may or may not give you a checkbox to say "no"?
Opt in like the advertising trackers in a phone that require root or a custom ROM to get rid of?
Opt in like Verizon's tagging of every HTTP request with a custom identifier that marks you regardless of privacy settings?
Opt in like how FB posts get graded and you get assigned a "credit score" where if you make a crack about "press 1 for English", you get flagged to potential employers as
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"You get discounts on other goods and services."
So that is what you call CEO perks, bonuses, and severance pay.....
Re:And now, things get Ugly. (Score:4, Insightful)
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This is not what big data is, this is just selling customers' information. And Google, despite being listed in the summary, never does it BTW.
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And Google, despite being listed in the summary, never does it BTW.
I have never heard of them doing it. But why would they? They are the end users of it for their advertising. Businesses go to Google to target advertise and have their products and services appear in search results as thinly disguised real hits - really, how many times of you clicked on hit and just got advertising?
Google's data is part of their business model. Selling it off is like selling their family jewels.
Anyway, when I do research on the web, DuckDuckGo is the only way to go.
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Can you trust that they never will? Just like Uber likely never would? Or any other shitty "big data" company never will? Until they do of course.
I long for the day when all private messages on Google and Facebook end up in a public searchable database. That will be fun.
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Can you trust that they never will?
Yes. Google's power over advertisers lies in Google's exclusive access to user information. Advertisers pay Google to figure out who would be good recipients of advertising, based on the belief that Google can identify those people better than the advertiser. If Google sells its collection of user data, then the advertiser will be able to make that determination for itself, and Google loses its main advantage over other ad-distribution networks. You do not sell the goose that lays golden eggs.
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This is not what big data is, this is just selling customers' information. And Google, despite being listed in the summary, never does it BTW.
No, and not for reasons for privacy either. They're simply holding onto it because it's more valuable for them to do so - for similar reasons that casinos and supermarket loyalty schemes might - to mine and profit from the information, layer services on top of it and deny that info to competitors.
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This is not what big data is, this is just selling customers' information. And Google, despite being listed in the summary, never does it BTW.
That lame argument that Google doesn't sell out customer's data comes up again and again. And it is nonsense, every time. They don't sell the data, but they sell the use of the data. They place adverts based on the data, using their deep knowledge about you (the product).
This is like arguing that an email spammer who doesn't sell his address list to other spammers, but sends spam emails as a service, is a good guy because he doesn't sell your address. Or arguing that a car thief doesn't do any harm as lo
Re: And now, things get Ugly. (Score:1)
Yet i'm 99% sure my facebook newsfeed correlates to my google searches.
With ghosty active and nearly 0 addons, am I missing something?
Re: And now, things get Ugly. (Score:1)
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You search on google. You click links. Links lead yo pages that have Facebook like buttons. Facebook learned that you visited the page. Facebook has already prescraped the page and classified its content. Facebook now can show it in your feed.
Or.
You search on google. You click a link. That page has google ads. Google knows that you visited it. Google bids on facebooks ad exchange and sometimes
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Re:And now, things get Ugly. (Score:4, Informative)
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Europe has strong and clear-cut data protection laws that require explicit consent and limit the data that may be kept on a person to that needed. If Uber sell or aggregate data without good cause in the EU they'll be digging their own grave.
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Just a question:
Would You agree to be used as product if:
1) Price of the service is cut by half
2) Anonymization of your data is really true
There is a lot of good data to be used to improve traffic in big cities for instance, what about if You get benefited by the service as well?
Can Big Data when properly regulated and anonymized be attractive ? Would You demand transparency as well, to find out whe
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2) Anonymization of your data is really true
That has been shown to be increasingly difficult. [nature.com]
There is a lot of good data to be used to improve traffic in big cities for instance.
What does that have to do with a private taxi service collecting data on your movements? That's a matter for the municipal administration to solve.
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The new Thai Gem scam (Score:5, Interesting)
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> shitweasels
Stephen King fan?
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(disclaimer: I apparently have an IQ of 158. But god fucking knows I'm as average as can be.)
That's obvious from the fact that you forgot to mention the scale used and the test. ;)
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Did I get that right?
No, you got it wrong, because you didn't RTFA. This is an optional service for people with both an Uber and a Starwood account, that want to link them, and give explicit permission for them to be connected. This isn't being forced on anyone, and Uber is not sharing your data without your informed consent.
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And treat the new market the same (Score:5, Insightful)
the ... information they know about me and you (Score:5, Insightful)
Good thing I don't use Uber, then!
Re: the ... information they know about me and you (Score:3, Insightful)
But where is love for Uber? There has been a lot of Slashdot people talking up Uber. I wonder what those same people are thinking now. Personally I never liked Uber to begin with because they are breaking laws instead of trying to work with city governments.
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It is much harder to love someone when you realize one day they gave you a virus. ;)
Hang on a minute (Score:2)
Did anyone using this service expect anything less? The data created by the company is another product that can be consumed.
I used to love being a free person, now I'm a data product to be bought and sold, much like a slave.
Re: Hang on a minute (Score:1)
Reddit is over there, son. This is Slashdot. We don't get our panties all twisted over very reasonable uses of words that you social justice weenies have deemed to be "offensive".
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Comparing your mild annoyance at the thought that a company that you don't have to do business with could sell your data to a third party to slavery is incredibly offensive.
People that hide behind the freedom of anonymous speech I fight for to criticize me, offend me. Go an write a letter to your duly elected representative you are wasting your time here.
Uber Google (Score:1)
Ubers app records location not just when you're using its service, it tracks you always. Uber is part owned by Google, Google also track you always. Lots of companies track your details, from the contacts in your address book, your locations, your messages, the URLs you visit, the search terms, what porn you like. Your bank transactions, your medical details, your identity details, all are sold under the category 'business records'. Your relationships, your family, romantic and sexual links. Where you shop,
If you're surprised (Score:5, Insightful)
Selling "Customers as a service" is the big, new economy and every single "startup" and "app" coming out of places like Y Combinator in the past few years has been about nothing more than selling your information. Every mobile app, every mobile game. Every "CHECK OUT THIS FREE NEW THING!" For example, Life 360. Think they're offering this for free? Life360 is currently valued at $250M. Facebook paid a few billion for WhatsApp Messenger.
You're a complete moron if you haven't been watching this.
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This isn't new. Data aggregators have been operating since before ARPANET existed. Every electronic transaction you make is sold to private brokers for a little extra profit and there are zero regulations on what they do with that data.
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This isn't even old..
Every prescription you get from a pharmacy.
Every ticket you get from the cops.
Every loan, credit card, house, boat, car, truck or Real Doll that you ever purchase.
Every pack of bubblegum that you buy with anything other than cash.
Everything you buy in a supermarket.
Everything you buy at WalMart, Target, TacoBell and the porn shop down the hall.*
Hell, likely everything you buy from your drug dealer is aggregated.
But all of this is dwarfed (so to speak) by the overlords of Mountain View -
Welcome to the 21st Century (Score:1)
Privacy will be the new luxury commodity of the 21st century. Seriously, it takes a shitload of time and thought to secure even the slightest bit of privacy these days. The biggest leak point of personal information are definitely smartphones. They haven't matured to a point where they would be as "easily" configurable as PC's and hence users usually haven't got the slightest clue what the phone is doing with all their data. I mean, a great example would be my smartphone's built-in weather widget: why the f
The EU will be all over it (Score:1)
A tax avoiding Luxembourg company breaking EU data privacy laws wont end well.
Poster might be reading too much into this (Score:5, Interesting)
As someone who is an SPG member and generally keeps tabs on what new promotions Starwood runs, this is anything but news. Starwood has over the past year or two, as a general strategy, struck up this kind of relationsip with a ton of companies.
- Starwood partners with Caesars Entertainment, where your SPG profile and your Total Rewards profiles can be linked. This means that loyalty shown at Caesars casinos can help you at Starwood hotels, and vice-versa
- Starwood also partners with Delta, where your SPG profile and your Skymiles profile can be linked, in a simmilar capacity - you can earn both skymiles and SPG points for Detla flights and for hotel stays.
- Now, they are doing the same with Uber... same story as above.
Obviously these companies are going to share customer data. However, if you think Starwood has the infrastructure built, capacity or talent to data mine Uber for what restaurants you go to and target hotel promotions, I think you have a bit higher expectations of them than I do. The much more immediate use of these types of partnerships is to encourage cross-brand loyalty for both companies.
Name Change (Score:2)
Well, it's time to change their name to Unter. See ya assholes.
Honestly ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Anybody who says they didn't see this coming is a complete fool.
This kind of crap was the goal all along.
They're a non-taxi taxi company who has non-employee employees who aren't covered by any rules, who has to justify a billion plus in valuation, and want to sell you data.
Everything about this company has been sleazy from the get go. Suddenly becoming a big-data company was entirely predictable.
Just another greedy technology company, claiming to be innovative, mostly skirting around the rules they claim don't apply to them, and wanting to use their access to your cell phone to sell data about you ... because that's where the real money is.
These guys have always sounded like a sleazy player. Maybe their "customers" will wise up. And maybe their drivers will too. The product has always been data.
Free rides now? (Score:2)
So how that Uber is going to make all this money from location data, are they going to give free rides? It seems unlikely, but it's possible that the revenue stream from subscribers to their database could exceed the operating costs for fuel, paying drivers, and other overheads. If they give free rides, they may be able to side-step some of the taxi laws, because they're not profiting directly from the riders.
The advantage of a cab is..... (Score:4, Insightful)
private cash only transactions.
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Moderated 'insightful'? Seriously? To me it is blindingly obvious.
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Moderated 'insightful'? Seriously? To me it is blindingly obvious.
Welcome to modern society.
The banks addict them to using a card (gotta get those points) but they act all hurt when the merchant raises prices because of credit card fees. Allow all kinds of draconian laws to be created to fight "teh terr'sts" but act like its the end of the world when this is used to curtail something they enjoy.
Hypocrisy isn't just in fashion, it's become a way of life.
Why is google listed? (Score:2)
Why is google listed?
They aggregate and anonymize the data before they sell it; it's just statistical information at that point.
Uber is shit (Score:1)
The Shearing Economy (Score:2)
Ugh. All your base R belong to us.
Avec optional appositional phrase:
Sans optional appositional phrase:
With proper parallelism:
With more visual help to pair the distal commas:
As it happens, I listened to an EconTalk ep
Uber Assholes (Score:2)
Well, as long as they're "One Of Us"... (Score:1)
...the big boys will probably leave them alone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]