4 ms·

Slightly off topic, but Lyft has really creeped me out recently. The last three times I’ve landed at SFO, I’ve gotten a push notification on my iPhone from Lyf

Slightly off topic, but Lyft has really creeped me out recently. The last three times I’ve landed at SFO, I’ve gotten a push notification on my iPhone from Lyft saying “welcome to SFO, get a Lyft.” It’s always come as we were taxiing to the gate. After the first notification, I turned off location services for Lyft and only do one time authorizations, and then close the app when I’m done, but I still get the push notification. How is Lyft figuring out that I just landed at SFO? FWIW it has not happened at any other airport.

TriangleEdge 1y ago
My first thought was it could scan the WiFi names. I think there's many ways to determine location without GPS.
- cameldrv 1y ago
  Apple restricts this as part of the location services permission though, and to clarify, it’s always happened very shortly after touchdown, just as we started to taxi, where probably the terminal WiFi is not in range. After thinking about it more, I think they somehow know what flight I’m on and are using flightaware or a similar service to know when the plane touches down. The question then is how they know I’m on the flight. They can do this if you share your calendar with them, but I don’t. The only thing I can think of is either the airline is selling them the data or they’re getting it from my credit card company. Airline flights are unusual on credit cards in that the entire itinerary is on your credit card statement, not just “American Airlines” or whatever.
  - joe_guy 1y ago
    I wouldn't assume this is how it works. But it could know your time zone changes and assume departure/arrival times based on it not being able to ping a server, then link this between possible airports based on time zones then possible flights based on the times. But I suspect the false positives on this would be huge and if you felt so compelled could easily test while at your desk.
  - alwa 1y ago
    I wonder if it uses Significant Location Change monitoring—which apparently works around “Always Allow” location permissions, and would be consistent with allowing location “once” or “while using the app” (which Lyft, I believe, requires as part of delivering its actual service). It also might explain why only SFO: is SFO one of your Apple-determined-and-enumerated “Significant Locations”? https://developer.apple.com/documentation/corelocation/cllocationmanager/startmonitoringsignificantlocationchanges%28%29 https://developer.apple.com/documentation/corelocation/clloc... (Edit: annoyingly, the parentheses are part of the URL. I don’t know how to encode them to make HN’s link parser happy, so you may have to add them by hand if you follow the link.) (Edit 2: fixed, duh--thanks @akovaski!)
    - akovaski 1y ago
      https://developer.apple.com/documentation/corelocation/cllocationmanager/startmonitoringsignificantlocationchanges%28%29 https://developer.apple.com/documentation/corelocation/clloc... https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/Percent-encoding https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/Percent-en...
  - fragmede 1y ago
    expanded receipt data is totally a thing, but then why would SFO be the only airport you've experienced this at? seems more likely there's something SFO is doing to see cell phone subscriber info, and selling that information to Lyft.
lyton 1y ago
There are many theories about this, but the one I find most plausible is that the airlines sell the data to Lyft. Previous HN discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43687696 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43687696 Another forum discussion: https://archive.ph/wip/ck9CJ https://archive.ph/wip/ck9CJ
- preciousoo 1y ago
  Holy shit. I’ve also been similarly creeped out by this behavior as well, and did the same setting changes as the original commenter. This comment made me remember I signed up for a Delta/Lyft promo way back in college. In my case in explicitly signed up to link both accounts, but I wonder if they have other methods
rafram 1y ago
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/usernotifications/unlocationnotificationtrigger https://developer.apple.com/documentation/usernotifications/...
- smegma2 1y ago
  Yeah but it looks like it shouldn’t work in this case since the location permission wasn’t given: > Before scheduling any notifications using this trigger, your app must have authorization to use Core Location and must have when-in-use permissions.

TriangleEdge 1y ago

My first thought was it could scan the WiFi names. I think there's many ways to determine location without GPS.

cameldrv 1y ago
Apple restricts this as part of the location services permission though, and to clarify, it’s always happened very shortly after touchdown, just as we started to taxi, where probably the terminal WiFi is not in range. After thinking about it more, I think they somehow know what flight I’m on and are using flightaware or a similar service to know when the plane touches down. The question then is how they know I’m on the flight. They can do this if you share your calendar with them, but I don’t. The only thing I can think of is either the airline is selling them the data or they’re getting it from my credit card company. Airline flights are unusual on credit cards in that the entire itinerary is on your credit card statement, not just “American Airlines” or whatever.
- joe_guy 1y ago
  I wouldn't assume this is how it works. But it could know your time zone changes and assume departure/arrival times based on it not being able to ping a server, then link this between possible airports based on time zones then possible flights based on the times. But I suspect the false positives on this would be huge and if you felt so compelled could easily test while at your desk.
- alwa 1y ago
  I wonder if it uses Significant Location Change monitoring—which apparently works around “Always Allow” location permissions, and would be consistent with allowing location “once” or “while using the app” (which Lyft, I believe, requires as part of delivering its actual service). It also might explain why only SFO: is SFO one of your Apple-determined-and-enumerated “Significant Locations”? https://developer.apple.com/documentation/corelocation/cllocationmanager/startmonitoringsignificantlocationchanges%28%29 https://developer.apple.com/documentation/corelocation/clloc... (Edit: annoyingly, the parentheses are part of the URL. I don’t know how to encode them to make HN’s link parser happy, so you may have to add them by hand if you follow the link.) (Edit 2: fixed, duh--thanks @akovaski!)
  - akovaski 1y ago
    https://developer.apple.com/documentation/corelocation/cllocationmanager/startmonitoringsignificantlocationchanges%28%29 https://developer.apple.com/documentation/corelocation/clloc... https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/Percent-encoding https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/Percent-en...
- fragmede 1y ago
  expanded receipt data is totally a thing, but then why would SFO be the only airport you've experienced this at? seems more likely there's something SFO is doing to see cell phone subscriber info, and selling that information to Lyft.

lyton 1y ago

There are many theories about this, but the one I find most plausible is that the airlines sell the data to Lyft. Previous HN discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43687696 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43687696 Another forum discussion: https://archive.ph/wip/ck9CJ https://archive.ph/wip/ck9CJ

preciousoo 1y ago
Holy shit. I’ve also been similarly creeped out by this behavior as well, and did the same setting changes as the original commenter. This comment made me remember I signed up for a Delta/Lyft promo way back in college. In my case in explicitly signed up to link both accounts, but I wonder if they have other methods

rafram 1y ago

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/usernotifications/unlocationnotificationtrigger https://developer.apple.com/documentation/usernotifications/...

smegma2 1y ago
Yeah but it looks like it shouldn’t work in this case since the location permission wasn’t given: > Before scheduling any notifications using this trigger, your app must have authorization to use Core Location and must have when-in-use permissions.