For Uber, 'Hell' is apparently tracking Lyft drivers

Jean Paul Sartre once said, "Hell is other people." For ride-share giant Uber, "Hell" is actually Lyft drivers.

The Information reports that Uber previously used secret software called "Hell" to track the location of available Lyft drivers and showed which of those Lyft drivers also worked for Uber, enabling Uber to attempt to snatch them away full-time. The software was active from 2014 to early 2016, right as ride-sharing was growing exponentially.

"Hell" got its name as something of a counterpart to Uber's controversial "God View" program which brought heat on the company after it was used for more nefarious schemes that seemed to violate user privacy.

Employees with access to the "God View" software would show off the feature at parties. The more troublesome aspects included non-anonymized, real-time information about its users (the company also used "God View" on a journalist who was arriving for meetings with Uber). An Uber executive also said at a dinner that it should think about digging up dirt on critics and journalists. 

Few were in the know about "Hell," according to The Information's story, but CEO Travis Kalanick was one of those involved and he often praised the team involved with the app.

Using "Hell" involved the creation of fake Lyft rider accounts (a violation of Lyft's terms of service) and using software to track the Lyft drivers who responded to these fake riders.

The spoofed Lyft accounts made by Uber then could get information about as many as eight of the nearest available Lyft drivers who could accommodate a ride request. Uber made sure that in each city where it was competing with Lyft, the fake rider locations were organized in a grid-like format so that it could view the entire city.

This also gave Uber a wealth of data to use to target riders and drivers in an attempt to get the upper-hand on Lyft as that service continued to expand.

Mashable has reached out to both Uber and Lyft for comment.

The story comes at an especially difficult time for Uber, which has been besieged by executive departures, accusations of "strike breaking" during Trump travel ban protests, allegations of sexual harassment, and other missteps that have resulted in a few rounds of "#DeleteUber" campaigns that have allowed Lyft to narrow the gap in the number of users.