Turn off location in iOS, and Uber doesn’t work

By | December 7, 2016

(Update: Uber say they are looking into it.) 

Buzzfeed says Privacy Advocates Want Uber To Stop Tracking Users After Rides End but Uber responds that “by offering the option of manually entering pick-up locations, the company is giving users a choice to be tracked or not.”

It quotes Kurt Opsahl, deputy executive director and general counsel at EFF, as saying that this ‘takes away a lot of the usability.’ Part of Uber’s appeal is how easy it is to open the app and let GPS pinpoint your location for a driver. ‘As you’re trying to get picked up by the side of the road, you might not know what address you’re at,’ Opsahl said. ‘I guess you could turn it on and off again…but that’s pretty clunky as well.’”

I’d agree, and have found in my tests that it’s worse than that: turn location off, and the app no longer works. 

First off, here are the options, as described in settings in iOS:

2016 12 06 18 10 15

So it’s either Always or Never. Nothing in between. Turn to Never and things not only get clunky — meaning that you’re prompted by dire warnings every few minutes, but after a day or two you start to get blank screens, like these when you try to book an Uber. 

2016 12 06 18 09 38

2016 12 06 17 10 20

I’ve reached out to Uber for an explanation. 

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