Ask HN: What are your ideas for rideshare security?

2 points by georgeam 7 years ago | 1 comment

A young woman has just been murdered in South Carolina after getting into the wrong car while waiting for a ride. What security mechanisms or protocols can be implemented to improve safety and security of rideshare customers?

One possibility is to show the customer on their phone (before the driver arrives) a photo of the driver who will be picking you up, a separate photo of the car that will be picking you up, and a License plate number of that car.

Another possibility is a randomly generated passphrase (using ordinary English words as suggested by xkcd author and the diceware author) which is generated and sent to the driver and the passenger, would be helpful and would have prevented this woman's death. Eg. the driver is supposed to say a meaningless phrase to the passenger, and the passenger likewise is supposed to say a different meaningless passphrase back to the driver. This establishes that both individuals are the individuals that are known to the rideshare company.

If usability of passphrases is an issue, a thirdr possibility is to randomly generate a graphic and send it to only the phones of the driver and the customer. Both must ask the other party to see their phone, and if the graphics don't match or one of the parties does not have a graphic, you don't get in the car. By graphic I just mean something that maybe looks like an avatar in two or three colors with geometric shapes, but fills a phone screen. It should be bold enough to show someone on your phone from a safe distance. The choice of colors and shapes and their relative positioning should have lower probability of matching than the probability of winning a lottery, while being easy to match visually in seconds.

What are your ideas? Reactions?

cjbprime 7 years ago |

They already do the first possibility.

The second and third wouldn't help, because they are strictly more work than the first, and the first wasn't done here even though it was available.

There will always be people who are too drunk or tired or uninterested to do your protocol, and those are the people most at risk who need it.

Something that might work is a recognizable LED light sign that goes on the roof, like a yellow cab has. It would be hard not to notice that this is missing, since it's visible from almost every angle. Then again, if you're not sober, there's really not much that can be relied on.