Comprehensive letter reveals Uber's corporate spy strategies

A 37-page extensive letter has been released which has exposed some secret ways Uber has used to keep tabs on its competition.

The letter,byRichard Jacobs, an ex-Uber employee - penned by his attorney, mentions different strategies adopted by Uber, including secretly recording conversations between rival executives of "Grab" and "Didi" as well as spying on taxi groups and impersonating customers to flood competitors with thousands of requests,media reports said.

Uber reportedly also had links with many unknown servers installed in order to "make millions of data calls against competitor and government servers without creating signatures that would alert competitors to the theft," the letter mentioned.

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Moreover, while a lot of competitors would be able to see numerous ride requests coming, one device, the Uber system, was allegedly devised so the calls would "appear to be multiple devices and a broader time period" with the aim of eliminating detection, the letter states.

Jacobs' attorney also alleges in the letter that Jacobs had previously heard about Uber bribing foreign representatives and also giving inflated wages to foreign groups.

The most striking allegation was that Uber reportedly had "undercover agents" who would ride the taxi to "collect intelligence" against both the taxi groups and its local competition.

The letter allegedly claims that that Uber has a source in a competitor's executive leadership team that would disclose data on the company's business processes,media reports said.

In addition, Uber and its attorney Craig Clark had "implemented a sophisticated strategy to destroy, conceal, cover up, and falsify records or documents with the intent to impede or obstruct government investigations as well as discover obligations in pending and future litigation," the letter mentioned.

Although Clark's lawyer disagreed with the statements in the letter, reports said.

Jacobs had left Uber in April which is when his attorney sent the letter to the company complaining about the unwarranted termination and violating several laws. Uber later settled with Jacobs over his allegations for $4.5 million in August,media reports said.

At the time of Jacobs testimony, he claimed that the one his ex-colleagues had been given a task to steal trade secrets and information from overseas competitors in order to get an idea about their business practices.

However, Jacob's later denied the accusations in a recent testimony, saying that he has no idea about stealing trade secrets from Waymo and further inferred that he had not looked at the letter in detail.
The letter and testimony of Mr Jacobs have become a vital source of Waymo’s lawsuit over Uber’s alleged theft of Waymo's trade secrets.

The trial was due earlier this month but was rescheduled when the letter surfaced later.

Meanwhile, Uber's new leadership is working to try to keep itself away from the past competitive tactics.

In a statement, Uber argued that not all of Jacobs' claims had been substantiated by the company, media reports said.