5 Shady Things You Had No Clue Your Favorite Apps Could Do

It sounds dumb as hell, but it's a solid scam. After all, who would ruin their own car in order to fake claim that a passenger hurled over the luxurious upholstery of their 2007 Prius? Lots of people, it turns out. This has been reported in Miami, Tampa, New York, Los Angeles, and Australia (it probably wouldn't work so well if it was all Amish communities). In at least one case, a passenger was hit with this fee for a canceled ride, meaning she didn't even get to lay a fart on the car, let alone fluids.

But wouldn't this scam fall apart when riders check their receipts or credit card statements? Well, that's just the darnedest thing. Many people don't, and even if they do, what's their counter-argument? "No, I didn't throw up 'over the entire dashboard' like I was 'riding a roller coaster after consuming eight corn dogs and a keg.' Yes, I realize that's what someone who did all of that would also say." At least Uber has been good at standing up for ... the drivers making the claims, forcing the victims to send multiple emails before they get their money back. So one way or another, you're raising a stink.

In a turn of events that would give Fox Mulder a rock-solid validation boner, the country's official soccer league app, La Liga, was found to be using GPS to detect when a phone had entered a bar during an Atletico Madrid or Barcelona game. It would then activate the phone's microphone to listen in for the sounds of soccer being played. If it didn't hear any, no foul (or anything else soccer-related, for that matter). If it did, the app then compared the phone's location against a list of nearby bars that had a license to broadcast games, narcing on any establishment that didn't.

For whatever reason, people didn't appreciate being turned into pawns of Big Brother's sports-obsessed cousin, and they bombarded the app with low scores. But that's only because soccer fans' usual method of resolving disputes didn't work here -- you can't really throw a bar stool through a phone screen, try as you might.

Between this and the health risks, we have to ask: Was this Starbucks' ways of ending the War on Christmas before it began?

And then there's dishes like the Burger Cheesebomb, a burger entirely drenched in cheese fondue, or the offerings at Black Tap Burger & Beer in New York, which are comprised of milkshakes topped with entire slices of cake. All perfectly fine dishes for about one bite, until the novelty wears off and you're faced with having to eat the dairytastic monstrosity you paid $19 for. Hope those new Instagram followers are worth the diabetes.

The effects on victims can be devastating. One compared it to "jungle warfare," but without the jungle, since the attacks could come from anywhere. The worrying thing is that there are no obvious solutions to this problem. At first glance, you'd think one could simply change the settings to lock out the abuser or remove the smart devices altogether ... but it's hard to do that unless you have access to the account (guess who probably has that locked down tight?), can recognize that you're being abused, or even know if there are smart devices in your home.

Moreover, there's no sign that there's even a way of making this illegal. We only recently started cracking down on revenge porn, for crying out loud. How long do you think it's going to take the legal establishment to pick up on abusers using indentured virtual robots to harass people? Let's put it this way: We might have actual robots by that time.

Adam Wears is on Twitter and Facebook, and has a newsletter dedicated to depressing history facts. It's not as heartbreakingly sad as it sounds, promise!

Kinda makes you want to go low-tech and just try some watercolors.

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