I had a flight yesterday from Europe back to the US, and when I landed at the airport, I received a notification on my iPhone from Lyft asking if I needed a ride from the San Francisco Airport to home. This felt extremely invasive to me, as if my locations are being tracked and shared. I have Lyft installed on my iPhone but I haven’t used it in months. When I look at active apps, it’s not one that’s running, though it might have a background agent running unbeknownst to me. I do not allow any iPhone apps to track me in Privacy & Security → Tracking.
I’m guessing that one of the Location System Services options shared my information with Lyft. Perhaps, it’s Signfiicant Locations? Or was it one of the other options? I’d love to determine exactly which one it was and disable it.
Would such a message go to every passenger who shared a smartphone number with the airline, or just those who have the Lyft app? It would seem silly to send it to people without the Lyft app, but it would be simpler programming and in line with a philosophy of “throw stuff at the wall and see if anything sticks”. Put another way, on arrival, the passenger is no longer the airline’s customer; Lyft is the customer and the passenger is the product.
Unlikely. That would likely result in a number of recipients reporting the text message as spam which could get Lyft in trouble with their SMS gateway provider.
One company sharing your personal information with another company should be opt-in. At the very least, you should know who is being gifted by whom with something that belongs to you.
Several European jurisdictions have such laws on the books. We don’t. I’m afraid the present administration is unlikely to change that. Of course the former that ran on being consumer friendly had 4 years to get it done and yet bubkis. Perhaps state law offers a venue.
My first thought is that the Lyft app has been granted Calendar or Mail access and its Background Location Services is set to On. I don’t discount the possibility that an airline could be sharing information with Lyft, of course, but I like to begin with simple fixes before considering collusion, government regulation, and class action lawsuit scenarios.
Per its App Store page, the Lyft app does not seek Calendar or Mail access.
But better to try than just trust that. Anybody can check at:
Settings > Privacy & Security > Calendar
If Lyft had requested access it would show there and you’d be presented a toggle to bar it from future access. If it doesn’t show up there, that’s because the app hasn’t requested access.
On my iPhone, I have Lyft version 2025.12.3.25047387. In You/Account/Settings/Privacy, there are options to link to Apple Calendar and Google Calendar. There is also a “Background location sharing” toggle that could be independent of iOS Settings and iOS Screen Time/Restrictions/Content & Privacy Restrictions.
So a possibility is that the OP granted permissions to the Lyft app before Apple introduced the iOS privacy controls that would limit the Lyft app from sending airport arrival notifications. Or if the app is rarely used, the settings were set up long ago and simply aren’t remembered.
That’s interesting. I’ve never enabled any of that so perhaps that is why there is no Lyft request to iOS. I’m not quite curious enough to check by turning it on though.
Of course, there are completely legitimate reasons for this access as well.
When you schedule a ride, the app can add your appointment to your calendar (hopefully only after asking you).
Similarly, for location sharing, the app may alert your driver when your pick-up time approaches. If you’re being picked up at an airport, where the arrivals sidewalk may be very long, it would help the driver to know where you’re standing.
Of course, the presence of legitimate uses doesn’t rule out the possibility of other additional uses.
A month or two ago, I summoned an Uber from a transit station, and it marked the meeting place as a block or so away in front of an apartment building. Since the usual pickup spot at the station was uncrowded and would need to be passed to reach the assigned spot, I was a bit surprised.
I asked the driver about it when I was picked up (at the assigned spot). He noted that the driver version of the app pinpointed my location so that he could have picked me up at the station. My app is set to give the app my location while using it.
IIRC, you should be able to drag the pin for the meeting place to other places on the map when you book the trip. For example, it’s much easier for Uber drivers to reach me at a point several houses away rather than at my own house. After manually setting that point as my pickup location a few times, Uber now seems to remember it when I type in my home address.
I don’t know if this a Lyft only thing, but regardless of where you dropped the pin, the driver can see where you actually are.
It’s a preference that’s default on but can be switched off in Lyft settings. And in fact, by the sound of it, I’m not sure if you can switch off entirely the part about the driving seeing your location on pickup. Almost sounds as if the pref only allows you to turn off location sharing once your ride has started.
I don’t know if this a Lyft only thing, but regardless of where you dropped the pin, the driver can see where you actually are.
How precise is that location determination? At a busy airport such as LaGuardia, the pickup location at the terminal used by United is pretty long. I identified my driver by the description of his car and his license plate. (I don’t use this very often).
