Uber has no doubt reached a success level with unparalleled competition worldwide. The ride sharing platform, despite having received tonnes of critcisms over various concerns, and having gone through a many controversies, with Uber Malaysia getting much hate from Malaysian Taxi drivers, Uber has managed to finish the obstacle course laid down in front of it. This time round, the iOS counterpart of the Uber has been reported to track users’ locations as long as weeks after they close the app.
Numerous users have claimed that the Uber app happened to still be tracking their location, long after they closed the app. This means that Uber on iOS still tracks you down for no reason even after you have been dropped off, to the extent of after closing the app and leaving the app untouched. Uber has announced last month that it would start collecting background data of its users, but that only applies up to 5 minutes after a drop off. This new development definitely sounds creepy at the very least.
Fortunately, Uber has responded, but has seemingly put the blame upon Apple’s iOS software. According to Tech Crunch, Uber has claimed that the location tracking issue was caused by the iOS Maps extension that was introduced by Apple back in September. For your information, the Uber app on iOS is integrated with Apple Maps. Hence it appears that the long term location tracking problem was not of Uber but triggered by an iOS feature. If that happens to be true, then apps which are integrated with Apple Maps will happen to constantly track its users’ locations as well.
Perhaps, users could make the jump to Android? Considering the fact that it might turn out as a serious privacy issue. What do you think?
Source: Tech Crunch