Travis Kalanick, the chief executive of Uber, visited Apple?s headquarters in early 2015 to meet with Timothy D. Cook, who runs the iPhone maker. It was a session that Mr. Kalanick was dreading.
For months, Mr. Kalanick had pulled a fast one on Apple by directing his employees to help camouflage the ride-hailing app from Apple?s engineers. The reason" So Apple would not find out that Uber had been secretly identifying and tagging iPhones even after its app had been deleted and the devices erased ? a fraud detection maneuver that violated Apple?s privacy guidelines.
But Apple was onto the deception, and when Mr. Kalanick arrived at the midafternoon meeting sporting his favorite pair of bright red sneakers and hot-pink socks, Mr. Cook was prepared. ?So, I?ve heard you?ve been breaking some of our rules,? Mr. Cook said in his calm, Southern tone. Stop the trickery, Mr. Cook then demanded, or Uber?s app would be kicked out of Apple?s App Store. Mike Isaac

Ob man von ?Tracking? sprechen kann, so wie es die erste Version des Artikels tat (anstelle von ?identifying and tagging?), sei dahingestellt. Es ist ohnehin nicht der zentrale Aspekt dieser Geschichte.
Diverse Firmen wurden bereits dabei ertappt Smartphone-Nutzer_innen auszuspionieren indem sie deren Verhalten und Gewohnheiten aufzeichnen. Das Einsammeln von UDIDs, die (untersagte) Nutzung privater APIs oder das bewusste Ausklammern von App-Funktionalität gegenüber Apples App-Store-Prüfprozess, sind weder ne...