Uber's bad behavior and the trouble with trusting Snapchat
Culture
Will snap chat become the hot new mobile payment app?
I'm Bridget Carey and this is your cnet update.
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Snap chat, the app infamous for data breaches and teen sexting is expanding into finance.
Snapchat has updated its app with Snapcash.
It's a new feature that lets you send money to friends through chat.
All you have to do is type a dollar sign and number to send that amount to a friend as long as that friend is also signed up for Snapcash.
The transaction takes about a day to process.
It's all powered by Square, and many people trust Square with their mobile transactions.
But it's hard to trust Snapchat which has proven to be easily hackable.
One hundred thousand private user photos have been exposed online and millions of phone numbers have been leaked in a data breach earlier this year.
Kind of makes you think twice about trusting it with your checking account.
It's only available for Android now, it won't be long before other messaging apps get into mobile payments.
There's been talk of Facebook working on a similar service to send money over chats.
But speaking of secure messaging, Whatsapp just leveled up it's privacy standards.
And now offers end to end encryption.
It's nearly impossible for hackers or government agencies to snoop on text conversations, making What's App one of the most secure text messaging apps available.
The encryption is only for the Android version of the app.
And only for texting, not photos or videos, or group messages, but what's app will expand encryption to other features in time, as well as for Apple's iOS app.
The car pickup service Uber has been criticized for unsavory business practices.
And once again in the media spotlight for bad behavior.
A top Uber executive, Emil Michaels, was at a dinner event boasting to guest about how he wants to spend a $1 million to dig up dirt on reporters that are critical on the Uber app and to also spy on those reporters' families.
This was said openly in front of a BuzzFeed editor.
The Uber executive targeted his comments particularly against one journalist, Sarah Lacy, the editor of the Silicon Valley website Pando Daily, who has written articles calling out Uber for sexist practices.
After the story came out, the Uber executive apologized, but this is yet another example of Uber's leaders acting like bullies.
It's been reported that Uber staff plays dirty by its hacking competing car pickup apps like Lift and Get by flooding these apps with fake orders and cancelling the rides.
And Uber continues to grow and expand new partnerships with all of this.
Uber just made a deal with Spotify to let riders stream the music service to the car stereo.
That's your tech news update.
And there's always more at CNET.com.
From our studios in New York, I'm Bridget Carey.
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