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Uber loses licence to operate in London, will still operate while appealing

(www.bbc.com)
256 points reubensutton | 2 comments | 25 Nov 19 10:19 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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caithrin ◴[25 Nov 19 10:50 UTC] No.21626966[source]▶
"Only in the last few months it has been established that 14,000 Uber journeys have involved fraudulent drivers uploading their photos to other driver accounts - with passengers' safety potentially put at risk getting into cars with unlicensed and suspended drivers."

This seems, from a technical perspective, an easy problem to solve with the resources of a public company.

Is it the desperation of people who need the money so badly they will constantly cheat the system? Can you design for that?

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onion2k ◴[25 Nov 19 11:02 UTC] No.21627015[source]▶
This seems, from a technical perspective, an easy problem to solve with the resources of a public company.

Is it the desperation of people who need the money so badly they will constantly cheat the system? Can you design for that?

I don't think the motivation on the part of the drivers who do this is very important. They're intentionally deceiving Uber customers, and in some cases endangering them. That just has to stop, even if the driver is desperate. The point here is that it's Uber's responsibility to stop it happening, and Uber has apparently chosen not to (like you, it's not that hard). That will be very hard to justify, especially as Uber were running TV ads about how they do background checks on all their drivers here in the UK recently.

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lotsofpulp ◴[25 Nov 19 11:46 UTC] No.21627244[source]▶
Other than constant facial recognition via camera pointed at the driver, how does anyone (not just Uber), guarantee that an approved driver doesn’t get out of the car and a non approved driver get in and start driving?

Perhaps a selfie with the driver taken by the passengers during the drive would also suffice.

In my opinion, Uber has done enough. They provide the passenger with the drivers name and photo. It’s up to the passenger to verify, but Uber should make violations easy to report.

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1. JazCE ◴[25 Nov 19 11:51 UTC] No.21627269[source]▶
using the fingerprint reader on a phone to accept any job?
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2. darkwater ◴[25 Nov 19 12:58 UTC] No.21627711[source]▶
Fingerprint on a phone (either iOS or Android) only authenticates the local phone user, it doesn't really expose any mean of unique identification to the app. So, basically even if you enforce fingerprinting to use the app, it would just authenticate/match whatever fingerprint was registered in the underlying OS.