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Uber is no stranger to trouble, but it may have landed in some especially hot water two years ago. New York Times sources claim that Apple CEO Tim Cook held a face-to-face meeting in early 2015 to call out Uber's Travis Kalanick (and threaten to remove his app from the App Store) after learning that Uber was not only violating iOS app privacy guidelines, but was trying to cover it up. Reportedly, the ridesharing outfit had been "fingerprinting" iPhones with permanent identities so that it could prevent drivers from cheating by creating fake accounts and accepting rides from these bogus customers. The IDs would last even after the app was deleted or the entire phone was wiped. While this helped keep drivers honest, it was clearly a privacy violation -- and it was made worse by Uber's bid to hide the tracking from App Store reviewers.
Reportedly, Kalanick told staff to "obfuscate" the Uber app's fingerprinting code for anyone operating from Apple's current headquarters in Cupertino. As far as the people at Infinite Loop could see, it was business as usual. However, the trick didn't work for long. Apple workers outside of the headquarters eventually spotted the shady behavior, leading to the meeting with Kalanick. The approach isn't that unusual for Uber (it recently admitted that it used location-based techniques to fool regulators), but it's particularly brazen given the risk of being dropped and losing millions of customers.
Apple isn't commenting on the meeting with Cook, and we've reached out to Uber for its take on the allegations. However, it's safe to say that Uber would like to leave an issue like this in the past. The company is trying to turn a corner, and Kalanick himself is looking for a second-in-command to keep his boundary-pushing tendencies in check. This revelation certainly won't help matters, though. It reinforces the notion that Uber is all too willing to break rules in the name of money, even if it's motivated by honest concerns like fraud.