A new report has revealed that Apple CEO Tim Cook threatened to drop Uber from the App Store for ‘fingerprinting’ iPhones to regulate employee conduct.
Uber has sat in water both internationally and locally these last few months, and now an explosive new report has revealed that the firm faced being dropped from Apple’s iOS App Store in a threat made by none other than the company’s CEO, Tim Cook.
The New York Times cites that Cook had a face-to-face meeting with Uber’s CEO, Travis Kalanick, in early 2015 – wherein the former CEO called out the latter over violating iOS app privacy guidelines.
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The explosive meeting revolved around Uber’s use of ‘fingerprinting’ iPhones – marking devices with unique identities – so that the company’s driver-partners couldn’t create a fake account to accept rides from fake customers. The ‘fingerprints’, or IDs that Uber developed would be retained long after the Uber app was deleted from a device, or the device itself was reset.
The New York Times reports that Uber CEO Kalanick ordered his staff to ‘obfuscate’ the app’s fingerprinting code from iOS app store reviewers and, further, anyone operating from Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino.
Eventually, of course, Apple workers outside of the company’s main headquarters noted the practice, which led to a meeting in which Apple CEO Tim Cook reportedly threatened Kalanick with a spot decision to remove Uber from the iOS App Store entirely.
In a statement to Engadget, Uber offered that it did not, in fact, track users behaviours after deleting the app. The company’s statement reads:
“We absolutely do not track individual users or their location if they’ve deleted the app. As the New York Times story notes towards the very end, 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. Similar techniques are also used for detecting and blocking suspicious logins to protect our users’ accounts. Being able to recognise known bad actors when they try to get back onto our network is an important security measure for both Uber and our users.”
Apple has refrained from commenting on the report, and Uber has cited that its ‘fingerprinting’ endeavour identifies red flags such as unusual IP addresses, GPS locations, and other undisclosed methods.
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What are your thoughts? Should Apple have taken harsher action, or was Uber right to flout the iOS App Store’s privacy guidelines to maintain its business? We want to hear your opinion – leave it in the comments below!
Follow Bryan Smith on Twitter: @bryansmithSA
