- competitor banks share information about people who bounce checks
- competitor insurance companies share data about customers with fraudulent claims
- competitor casinos share photos of card counters
Probably many others I can't think of.
EDIT to reply: thanks for the customers' returns example. I found a story explaining the shared database: https://www.elliott.org/case-dismissed-2/the-retail-equation...
They are all using a third party called The Retail Equation.
https://www.theretailequation.com/frequently-asked-questions...
> How does the system work?
> When a consumer wants to make a return, a retailer will scan the original sales transaction receipt and/or collect consumer identification (in certain regions that may be the individual’s driver’s license or government-issued ID card) to make an identification of the person and his/her unique return behavior.
I'm pretty sure it's any claim. If you want to see something scary request your lexis nexus consumer report.
If you’ve ever had an account closed, you’ll discover the bank will refuse to tell you why. So if you aren’t aware of CIFAS, things can be pretty confusing.
Near zero repercussions for the bank that wrongly adds anyone to the database (potentially a 3 figure sum awarded by the financial ombudsman, again if the person is aware of the financial ombudsman).
I’m frankly surprised they’ve been able to continue to exist. Only with GDPR coming in have they given you the option to check if you are on the list without having to write a physical letter.
Examples of them screwing up:
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2020/oct/31/mortgage-fraud...
https://www.msbsolicitors.co.uk/cifas-fraud-markers-the-prob...
All these business costs are passed onto other consumers... and while maybe not illegal, businesses essentially have Terms Of Service just like any other private entity.
An implication of this “banned users” data sharing is that this data exchange must be overseen by regulators, to enforce equal access to competitors to this data and also that companies drop people from the “banned users” database after some time, not penalized for life except in rare cases.
I would argue that most users’ petty behaviors that lead to banning do not deserve to make them pay for it the rest of their lives - and that there are rare exceptions who do deserve to be banned for life because certain users’ behavior is so egregious.
Also, consider cases for jurisdictional banning and global banning. Some behaviors are not allowed in certain countries. Take a gay couple kissing in a car in Saudi Arabia - should this couple be banned? If so, just if attempting to use services in Saudi Arabia, or globally? These are serious and important considerations.
Really, the only proper way to do a background check is via your local law enforcement. These companies should not be relied on. Ever. Even if they're right a majority of time, the cases where they're wrong are too damaging to be considered trivial.
What in the history of policing makes you think they're immune to similar mistakes?
Basically, they put an asterisk next to their reports saying to take them with a grain of salt. But that doesn't change the damage done by a potential employer getting a peak into your past that they never should have gotten.
Edit: fixed some typos
For people who don't know lawyers, that's largely theoretical.
If they don't, you have political and legal recourse. A third-party company doesn't have the same legal obligation, nor does the public have any democratic control over that organization. Data companies have institutional pressures to preserve data at all costs, not to be proactive in destroying records of innocent folks.
There's a lot of entropy in first/middle/last names, DOBs, SSN, driver's license, etc. so accidental typo matches just means bad data, not some other person.
(Obviously, intentional identity theft notwithstanding.)
Far as I understood it, that was exceptionally rare in the industry. Not sure how prolific their customer base was or if they're still active.
A recent viral video this week showed a woman assaulting an Uber driver, she livestreamed on IG to try to justify her actions and in the process said that she would only be using Lyft, then lyft tweeted that they pre-emptively banned her.
If FAANG joined together to make a shared blocked users list, they could effectively make a digital caste system subject to little current government oversight.
You mean like credit scores?
And that's just in the US, if they pull something like that in the EU it's almost certain there would be new laws put in place to inflict heavy fines.
That's why we don't rely on the court of public opinion for deciding guiltiness of an accused.
What needs to be canceled is cancel cultuer itself.
What safeguards are there so that a grouchy driver or engineer can't use it to mess with their ex? For instance.
Not gonna say it's perfect, but as an engineer at one of these companies I'll say production access is generally very locked down and audited to the point of often being quite an encumbrance to even be able to debug production issues. Very unlikely anyone will be willy-nilly blacklisting drivers over personal vendettas.
I suspect NTSB/FAA are much more effective at correcting bad info than no-fly list which is managed by people who like to think they are fighting so much evil the harms of their policies are justified.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20041207/1958200.shtml
Doing these things in the dark almost always leads to abuse.
(PS: what is going on with all these colons in their urls?)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Fly_List#Vulnerabilities
If bob from City A's best taxi fires you and you try to get a job at City A's fastest taxi, fastest guy is probably gonna call best guy.
If you move cross-country, probably not.
I've seen some truly horrifying behavior from Lyft in terms of safety that makes me cautious of wanting to use the app, despite liking Lyft's public presence better. I suspect it's in the interest of growth and gaining market share to have things like lax-er driver background checks so they get more drivers. In the end it ends up hurting them a lot more, and can lead to terrible things for riders.
Interestingly, literally every C-level exec at Uber from the Travis Kalanick era has been replaced. Uber is the "Ship of Theseus" of companies.
- shortly after Dara joined, he sent a company-wide email to the effect of "all corporate espionage projects must be halted effectively now"
- he introduced a new guiding motto: "We do the right thing. Period." and repeatedly refers back to it
- he found out about a previously undisclosed data leak and went ahead and made a proper public disclosure. The CSO had to leave the company and eventually got charged as a result[0]
- on an all-hands meeting centrally themed on making things better after the Fowler scandal fallout, a board member made a cringey sexist joke. He had to resign from the board that afternoon. This incident spoke volumes about how discrimination culture was no longer going to be tolerated.
- around the same time, as part of the HR revamp, a number of policies were introduced (training courses, anon hotline)
- there was a huge internal project called 180 days of change in response to the wave of scandals. This encompasses the safety features, along with improvements to the driver UX to make it easier to understand their income, among other things (which I hear were very well received by users).
[0] https://slate.com/technology/2020/08/uber-joseph-sullivan-ch...
Not necessarily. That's the whole debate!
The problem with these sorts of backchannel data sharing is that unlike things like credit reports, individuals have little to no access to see what is in their file and dispute it.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/04/business/dealbook/wells-f...
There is some atrocious behavior out there in both the passenger and driver seats.
(For those not familiar, we do already have this in the US, but Uber/Lyft wanted their drivers not to be commercially-licensed, so now they have to reimplement the DMV.)
There's a reason we have "innocent until proven guilty" and lots of interlocking checks and balances in the legal system to prevent the mob from lynching people.
Nowadays they can lynch your social life and employment options over a drunken tweet.
How do we fix this?
https://www.theroot.com/uber-bans-passenger-for-life-after-s...
It's already hard to get a job as a felon in the US, and hasn't that worked out great!
In case it's not obvious: Just no. It's been tried. It's a horrible idea.
