Security researcher GironSec has pulled Uber’s Android app apart and discovered that it’s sending a huge amount of personal data back to base – including your call logs, what apps you’ve got installed, whether your phone is vulnerable to certain malware, whether your phone is rooted, and your SMS and MMS logs, which it explicitly doesn’t have permission to do. It’s the latest in a series of big-time missteps for a company whose core business model is, frankly, illegal in most of its markets as well.
Yet another scandalous revelation that will, I predict, have pretty much zero effect on Uber’s bottom line. Too many people have already made their peace with being permanently and ceaselessly surveilled by every government and every business.