This week, news broke that an Uber executive suggested smearing journalists critical of the company while a general manager with the company accessed a Buzzfeed reporter’s ride logs without her permission.
In a post published Tuesday, San Francisco Magazine editor Ellen Cushing shared that in the past current and former employees of Uber also warned her that corporate higher-ups may access her ride logs.
Cushing cautioned that she couldn’t verify whether the company ever did access her information. But her account lends credence to the existence of “God View,” an internal tool that gives Uber corporate employees access to the locations of Uber drivers and customers who requested a ride. It also shores up Buzzfeed reporter Johana Bhuiyan’s account of being tracked by Uber New York general manager Josh Mohrer, as well as to entrepreneur Peter Sims’ uncanny experience with the service.
Back in September, Sims wrote about an incident that happened a couple of years ago while he was riding an Uber through New York City. Sims wrote that an acquaintance was texting him with updates on exactly where his car was driving before revealing that she was at an Uber Chicago launch party, where Sims’ car was identified and tracked on a screen for partygoers to watch.
Uber said Wednesday that access to riders’ data is permitted only for “legitimate business purposes” and that employees may face discipline if they are found violating the company’s privacy policy.
“Our data privacy policy applies to all employees: access to and use of data is permitted only for legitimate business purposes,” the company said in a statement. “Data security specialists monitor and audit that access on an ongoing basis. Violations of this policy do result in disciplinary action, including the possibility of termination and legal action.”
Uber-conservatives are always talking about how the government spies on people. Well the government does not have the resources that a Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter or Uber have.
Control of the media and private communications are threatened more by private interests than any government agency.
Having said that, I AM a capitalist, I just think that sometimes we DO need regulations.
Until the court order arrives from the shadow court system that approves close to 100% of government requests.
I self regulate. If you find my real name on the net, it is me. There isn’t another with the same name. Because of that, I don’t use social media and I don’t use my name in any online forums. That limits the info available to casual snoopers, at least. I don’t have a need to hide from the government, fortunately, and I just have to assume that I’m not of much interest to criminal hacker groups.
Yeah, but unless you’re using a proxy or vpn, your IP address is still identifiable.
Uber and Lyft appear to be real scumbag organizations.