Uber using ‘greyball’ secret weapon to avoid undercover city regulators

Uber has been wielding a secret weapon to thwart authorities who have been trying to curtail or shut down its ride-hailing service in cities around the world.

The programme included a feature nicknamed “Greyball” internally that identified regulators who were posing as riders while trying to collect evidence that Uber’s service was breaking local laws governing taxis.

To stymie those efforts, Uber served up a fake version of its app to make it appear the undercover regulators were summoning a car, only to have the ride cancelled. The San Francisco company mined the data that it collects through its real app to pinpoint the undercover agents.

The New York Times revealed Greyball’s existence in a story published on Friday based on information provided by four current and former Uber employees who were not named.

Uber acknowledged it has used Greyball to counter regulators working with the company’s opponents to entrap its drivers. Greyball is part of a broader programme called VTOS, shorthand for “violations of terms of service”, that Uber says it developed to protect its service.

“This programme denies ride requests to fraudulent users who are violating our terms of service – whether that’s people aiming to physically harm drivers, competitors looking to disrupt our operations, or opponents who collude with officials on secret ‘stings’ meant to entrap drivers,” Uber said.

Although Uber is becoming more widely accepted than in its early years, the company says it still uses Greyball as a tool in some cities that it declined to identify.