Silicon Valley Tech News Roundup – August 29th

The City of Chicago sues Grubhub and DoorDash – 8/27

The City of Chicago filed lawsuits against platforms DoorDash and Grubhub. The city alleges the companies employ unfair business practices and are deceiving customers.

The lawsuit alleges the platforms use “bait-and-switch” methods to deceive customers by advertising lower delivery fees. Once the customers go to place an order, the companies add extra fees. Restaurant owners claim both DoorDash and Grubhub add their business to their platform without their consent. Likewise, there have been claims the companies conceal lower prices the restaurants offer to their customers outside of the platforms. The City of Chicago wants more transparency and penalties to compensate the restaurant owners and customers that have been victims of such practices.

In November last year, DoorDash stopped adding businesses that did not have agreements with the platform. Likewise, if the restaurants wanted to be removed from the platform, DoorDash removed them within 48 hours. Meanwhile, Grubhub also claims they remove restaurants from their platform after being requested to do so.

Both DoorDash and Grubhub have released separate statements and labeled the lawsuits baseless.

T-Mobile suffers a data breach, promises to do better – 8/28

Earlier this month, T-Mobile was a target of a massive data breach.

On August 20th, the company confirmed 7.8 million post-paid and on-contract customers were targets of the breach. The stolen data included their names, date of births, Social Security numbers, ID numbers, together with IMEI / IMSI information. Breach impacted further 5.3 million post-paid customers. However, the hackers did not steal their Social Security and ID numbers. Not even former customers were spared as 667.000 former T-Mobile subscribers had their data stolen. Since 2018, hackers have breached T-Mobile five times.

In a statement published on the company’s website, Mike Sievert, CEO of T-Mobile, apologized to T-Mobile customers and provided an update. Sievert wrote: “To say we are disappointed and frustrated that this happened is an understatement. Keeping our customers’ data safe is a responsibility we take incredibly seriously and preventing this type of event from happening has always been a top priority of ours… On behalf of everyone at Team Magenta, I want to say we are truly sorry.” Furthermore, T-Mobile partnered with Mandiant, a cybersecurity company, and consulting firm KPMG LLP to transform the company’s approach. It should protect both T-Mobile and its customers from these types of breaches in the future.

A new study suggests online trolls are hostile offline too – 8/27

American Political Science Review published a study that suggests online hostility and trolling mirrors offline behaviors.

Researchers at Aarhus University reviewed representative surveys and behavioral studies from the United States and Denmark. They wanted to ascertain why people consider the online environment more aggressive and hostile than offline interactions. The researchers wanted to examine the hypothesis people are more inclined to get hostile and abusive online when compared to how they would behave in social, face-to-face interactions.

The data suggests online behavior mirrors the users’ offline interactions. Simply put, people who are aggressive and hostile online behave the same in their in-person interactions. Even though Denmark and the United States have different political systems, the data was similar for both countries.

In part, the study says: “We found that people are not more hostile online than offline; that hostile individuals do not preferentially select into online (vs. offline) political discussions; and that people do not over-perceive hostility in online messages.”

Tim Cook receives $750 million payout – 8/27

According to Apple’s filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Tim Cook received more than 5 million shares in the company. He sold a majority of them for $750 million. Based on the deal Cook agreed to when he took over the company from Steve Jobs, he was eligible for the award based on how Apple shares performed when compared to other companies on the S&P 500stock index.

Since Cook became the chief executive in August of 2011, the company’s share price rose 1200%. Over the past three years, the stock price went up by 191,3%. Apple’s market valuation is almost $2.5tn.
The filing with the SEC also reveals Tim Cook donated almost $10 million worth of Apple’s shares to charity. However, the recipients of the donation were not named. Bloomberg Billionaire’s Index estimates Cook’s net worth at $1.5 billion. Last year, Cook signed a new pay deal until 2026.