Uber says it's removing app feature that allows tracking of riders for up to five minutes after a trip, starting this week for iPhone users
PALO ALTO, Calif. (Reuters) - Uber Technologies Inc [UBER.UL] is pulling a heavily criticized feature from its app that allowed it to track riders …
Context & Ripple Effects
The five-minute post-trip tracking feature has been a running sore since Uber shipped it: within weeks of the update, the EFF publicly asked Uber to roll it back, making it one of the most visible examples of a ride-hail platform collecting rider location well beyond the ride itself.
Pulling it now — starting with iPhone users this week — lands mid-way through a broader retreat in Uber's data practices: the company had already announced a pilot to obscure pickup and drop-off locations shown to drivers, replacing exact addresses with general areas. The removal reads as Uber conceding the advocacy fight it lost in 2016 rather than a standalone tweak.
First-order effects
- iPhone riders stop being trackable by Uber for up to five minutes after each trip starting this week, directly answering the rollback demand EFF raised after the original update.
Second-order effects
- With only iPhone users covered at launch, pressure shifts to Uber to extend the removal to Android or explain the gap — and the same advocacy playbook that forced this reversal now has a template for attacking remaining telemetry, such as the driver-behavior monitoring Uber introduced earlier.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, post-trip and granular location collection becomes something platforms negotiate with privacy advocates rather than ship silently by default — Uber's own later move to hide trip endpoints from drivers suggests location data is being scoped down across both sides of its marketplace.
The trend: Consumer apps are walking back always-on location collection under sustained advocacy pressure, with Uber's rider-tracking reversal as a marker of how quickly defaults can flip once they become reputational liabilities.