Uber App Can Spy On Apple Users

This news is specifically for iPhone users that Uber app can secretly record everything on the iPhone screen even if the app is not open and running only in the background. The security researchers have made this discovery.

There is a special permission granted to Uber App which allows it to access everything iPhone users look in to be it writing down the password or looking at private pictures.

As per Uber, this feature is not used and it will be eradicated but in theory via this feature the company can spy on all its users’ personal data. This news is worrying for Uber users, who have an iPhone.

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Will Strafach a security researcher found this and he feels its extremely unusual and said that it was “totally unprecedented” that Apple has given permission to a ride-hailing company.

Luca Todesco another security researcher said, “What???? Uber has this? It allows them to record the screen even when the app is closed and potentially steal sensitive info.”

Now, this must be noted that in order to implement this feature Uber would have to take permission from Apple.

Mr. Strafach said, “It looks like no other third-party developer has been able to get Apple to grant them a private sensitive entitlement of this nature. Considering Uber’s past privacy issues I am very curious how they convinced Apple to allow this.”

This permission was given to Uber so that it works in a better way with Apple Watch.

An Uber official said, “This API was only used for a short period of time on an old version of our Apple Watch app. It enabled the app to run the memory-intensive rendering of maps on the iPhone and then send the image to the Watch app. It was never used for any other purpose and has been nonfunctional in our code for quite some time. The memory limitation of Apple Watch was fixed by subsequent updates in the OS and we’ve issued an update to our app to remove the API completely.”