uUber Proposes Simpler Privacy Policy, Will Let Riders See Their Ratingsr

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  (Adam Fagen)

  One feature of ride-hailing app Uber that’s meant to keep riders from acting like complete jerks is mutual rating: passengers rate their drivers, sure, but drivers also rate passengers. Secretly. Users can’t see their own ratings, but they could prevent someone from being picked up at a busy time. The company has promised to clarify its privacy policy and allow passengers to see their own ratings.

  They aren’t doing this to win over new riders or just for funsies: it’s at the recommendation of an outside law firm’s review of their privacy policies. Last year, people began to have some very understandable concerns after the existence of what’s called “God mode” within available to select employees. This mode serves as a sort of Marauder’s Map of real life, showing where every user of the service is in real time.

  Last year, people began asking questions about Uber’s privacy policies after one of the company’s executives answered a reporter’s questions about the service by e-mailing her excerpts from logs of her own Uber trips, something that she didn’t give him permission to do.

  The new privacy policy makes it much clearer that Uber collects certain information about its users, which includes their location at any time (even when the app isn’t running) and that the company will store information about people in your address book that you share with the app.

  Uber Broadens Rider Privacy Policy, Asks for New Permissions [Bloomberg News]

  
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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

uSwiss Cheese Has Been Losing Its Holes, And Now Science Knows Whyr

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  (Ruby Nguyen)

  
  The 21st century has not been kind to the trademark texture of Emmental cheese. To Americans, that’s Swiss cheese: the stuff with all the holes in. But the holes have been vanishing and the cheese becoming smoother over time. Scientists determined to find out why. The answer? Modern cheese is just too clean.

  The AP reports that a Swiss government-funded agricultural institute delved into the mystery of the nation’s most famous cheese and found that holes need hay. Or, more specifically, that “microscopically small hay particles” that make their way into the milk are responsible for the holes when that milk becomes cheese.

  When a dairy farm is all manual labor, with people doing their best to keep rooms clean but using pre-industrial tech, some of those airborne particles will make their way into milk and there’s nothing you can do about it. But the transition from traditional milking methods into fully-automated industrial systems means there’s less stuff in the air, and that means fewer holes in the cheese.

  The solution? More hay. “In a series of tests,” the AP reports, “scientists added different amounts of hay dust to the milk and discovered it allowed them to regulate the number of holes.”

  Mystery of disappearing holes in Swiss cheese solved [Associated Press]

  
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by Kate Cox via Consumerist

uAmazon Brand Coffee And Cereal May Soon Be Coming To An Internet Near Your

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  (Nazra Z)
  

  
  Amazon really, really wants to be your everything store. They do tech, they do digital goods, they do groceries, they even do same-day delivery. So perhaps it seems inevitable that they’re no longer just interested in selling other people’s stuff, but coming up with their own house brand for everyday items too.

  The Wall Street Journal reports that, like basically every grocery and big box store out there, Amazon is planning to launch its own in-house store-brand line of items under the Amazon Elements label.

  Amazon’s first foray into the Amazon Elements brand was not without its challenges. They started late last year with diapers and baby wipes, but had to yank the diapers off the virtual shelves less than two months in to the experiment because customers basically hated them and said they didn’t work properly. (And if there is one baby care product you really, really want to work properly, it is a diaper.)

  At this point, the only Elements-branded product Amazon sells are the baby wipes. But, the WSJ reports, they could soon be joined by not only other personal care and home care items like razors and cleaning products, but also by your standard grocery-store staples like coffee, soup, water, pasta, and pet food.

  Sales of generic (store-brand) items are on the rise, the WSJ points out, and it makes sense for Amazon’s bottom line that they would want to enter that market. The WSJ points out that Amazon’s Elements brand is likely to compete with Costco’s Kirkland line and Target’s Archer Farms and Up & Up lines. Private-label items have a higher profit margin for retailers, despite the fact that they generally cost consumers less.

  But customers like generics mainly because they cost less. Not only did the Elements diapers not work particularly well, but also Elements baby products were framed as an upscale, higher-end option for parents to consider — on par with the biggest brand names, and more expensive than existing generic options. If Amazon wants Prime members to sip a cup of Amazon Brew with their Amazon-Os in the morning, they’ll probably have to make sure that their products cost less than some Starbucks and a box of Cheerios.

  Amazon Plans to Add Its Own Line of Food [Wall Street Journal]

  
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by Kate Cox via Consumerist

COVER: Piano, Guitarra | Fade To Black - Metallica

uConsumerist Friday Flickr Findsr

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• Here are eleven of the best photos that readers added to the Consumerist Flickr Pool in the last week, picked for usability in a Consumerist post or for just plain neatness.

  

  (Freaktography)

  

  (Eric BEAUME)

  

  (Michael G. Chan)

  

  Erin Nekervis

  

  (C x 2)

  

  (Rich Renomeron)

  

  (Rick Drew)

  

  (Great Beyond)

  

  (Kevin Cardosi)

  

  (Jason Cook)

  

  (Eric BEAUME)

  Want to see your pictures on our site? Our Flickr pool is the place where Consumerist readers upload photos for possible use in future Consumerist posts. Just be a registered Flickr user, go here, and click “Join Group?” up on the top right. Choose your best photos, then click “send to group” on the individual images you want to add to the pool.

  
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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

u3 More Toxic Salad Beetles Show Up In Canada And Texasr

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  Maybe save this post until you’re done eating your salad.

  It turns out that fleeing to Canada won’t keep you safe from the Salad Beetle Scourge. You may remember the Iron Cross Blister Beetles turning up in organic salads and pakages of leafy greens across the United States. We learned today of three more discovered in different parts of North America, two of which were in Canada.

  HERE IS YOUR WARNING THAT THERE’S A PICTURE OF ONE OF THE BEETLES BELOW

  In Canada, two beetles found in greens this week made the news: Erin found our site while researching the creature she found in her salad greens and sent us this picture:

  

  She also appeared on TV news this morning to talk about her find.

  Maybe the experience wasn’t as novel as the CBC thought, though: just a few hours later, another CBC story appeared out of the province of Saskatchewan, featuring another woman who found the same type of beetle in her salad: this one from Earthbound Organics. The company told the CBC in a statement that it had never encountered the Iron Cross blister beetle in its farms before, and that it would stop using greens from that particular supplier and investigate the situation. They offered the woman $30, which she declined, and then $250, which she also declined. “I don’t know how long it will be until I can eat packaged food like this again,” she said about the offers.

  While Earthbound Farms may be correct that they’ve never encountered the insect on their farms before, one of the original four salad beetle reports was about an Earthbound Organics product. A similar beetle was found in one two weeks ago. The company responded by sending a form letter about the beneficial insects used in organic farming. The blister beetle, you may have guessed, is not supposed to be one of them.

  Melissa encountered one of the critters in a restaurant. She lives in Texas, which is a within the beetle’s native habitat, but they’re not supposed to live in restaurants. She didn’t get a picture, but described the scene instead:

  It was the scariest creature I have ever seen! As I realized it was a beetle, I came into a state of shock and even feeling my blood pressure rise a little, I did not think about taking a photo of it or my salad. :( Once I realized I needed a photo so people could believe me, the waitress had already thrown it in the trash.

  Reminder: if you find a large black, yellow, and red beetle in your food, contact the Food and Drug Adminstration (or equivalent agency where you live) and let them know. Also contact the packager of the product as well as the retailer if those are separate companies.

  
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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

uAT&T Wants To Be Able To Charge Video Streaming Services For Exemption From Customers’ Data Capsr

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  (Mike Mozart)

  
  Data caps on home broadband stink, but they’re also a reality for millions of internet users (and probably soon for all of us). And as the FCC’s new open internet rules go into effect in the coming days to protect net neutrality, they’re also becoming one of the main ways in which ISPs can soak up extra cash from consumers and businesses alike.

  Ars Technica noticed the filings with the FCC this week, in which AT&T claims that their data caps are high enough for most users and most use, and so therefore these deals won’t actually harm anyone — and in fact, are actually better for consumers and competition.

  AT&T places data caps on not only their mobile data services but also on their traditional fixed wireline broadband services. For AT&T’s DSL subscribers that cap is 150 GB. U-verse customers get 250 GB, and U-verse with GigaPower customers can subscribe to either a 500 GB or 1 TB tier. Overage runs subscribers $10 for every 50 GB, which seems to be emerging as the new industry standard.

  But where the new net neutrality rule requires that all data coming through those networks be allowed equally to reach the customers who asked for it, it does not require that all data must be treated equally with regard to those caps. And AT&T as asking the FCC to make sure it stays that way.

  AT&T has already struck several such “sponsored content” deals on the mobile side of its business. The deals allow companies to pay for exemption from data caps by, in effect, pre-paying for the data instead of charging the customer for it.

  If, for example, Streaming Music Company were to become a data sponsor, they would pre-purchase an absolute mass of data from AT&T. Then Streaming Music Company users on the AT&T network wouldn’t see their data allowance take a hit when listening to music on that service. The data for Streaming Music Company would, instead, be charged on the other end, against their pre-purchased allotment. It’s sort of like the digital version of business reply mail or prepaid return shipping labels.

  It becomes a good deal for Streaming Music Company because the use of competitors like Google, Amazon, Pandora and Spotify, on the other hand, would count against a user’s data cap. So users who are at risk of running into a data cap, but still want to enjoy their streaming music, would be more likely to choose the service that wouldn’t cost them extra.

  In mobile, such zero-rating deals are common. In wired broadband, it’s much less so — but the potential is there, and AT&T wants to protect it.

  Streaming video is over half of primetime network traffic, these days. AT&T could strike very lucrative deals with the Amazons, Hulus, or YouTubes of the world (but probably not all at once) to guarantee those services an exemption from broadband caps. (Netflix has stated publicly that it will no longer seek exemption from data caps, after signing a deal of that type in Australia created a great deal of negative press for them here in the U.S.)

  AT&T could also — especially if the DirecTV merger goes through — go the Comcast route and exempt any of its own services from counting toward data caps.

  A group of competitors and consumer advocates including, among others, Dish, Cogent, and Public Knowledge, asked the FCC to include a bar on these agreements as a condition of approving the merger between AT&T and DirecTV. AT&T, however, is fighting back.

  “The record does not support Opponents’ request that AT&T be barred from exempting any online video service from any usage-based tracking, metering, or billing in its broadband services,” AT&T wrote.

  “Opponents offer no reason for the Commission to … issue a blanket, abstract prohibition that would apply only to AT&T. Doing so would deprive AT&T customers of service offerings tailored to fit their usage and their budget. It would also distort competition by hindering AT&T’s efforts to close the gap and compete with cable’s higher-speed broadband products.”

  Got that? Implicitly pressuring consumers to choose some services instead of others by making some subject to and others exempt form a data cap is providing “service offerings tailored to fit their budget.”

  AT&T also pointed to their recent deal with Hulu as an example of their commitment to keeping internet video available to customers. Neither AT&T nor Hulu have said if the deal includes a data cap exemption.

  AT&T wants to choose which online video services count against data caps [Ars Technica]

  
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by Kate Cox via Consumerist