Tag Archives: Uber
Privacy Getting Taken For A Ride
by Samantha Gallegos, Capitol Weekly
Sponsored by the Consumer Federation of California, a non-profit consumer-rights advocacy group, [Assembly Member Ed] Chau’s bill would set up privacy standards related to “personally identifiable data” that [Transportation Network Companies] — like Uber or Lyft — would be required to follow. Those standards don’t exist now, Chau said. “I guess you could say, well, protecting some personal data is better than protecting none,” said Richard Holober, executive director of the Consumer Federation. “Right now none is protected. And I don’t believe the flawed argument that Internet-based companies should have greater freedom than the other businesses who collect and share data.” Read More ›
California Bill Would Force Uber To Guard Passenger Privacy
by Carolyn Said, San Francisco Chronicle
A bill pending in Sacramento would force Uber, Lyft and other ride-hailing companies to follow stricter privacy rules. AB886 specifies that the smartphone-ordered ride services cannot disclose any data on passengers except to combat fraud or other crimes. It also says the companies must destroy all personal information when customers cancel their accounts. “We want to put the consumers in the driver’s seat about who owns their data and personal information, instead of having them take a back seat,” said bill author Assemblyman Ed Chau. Read More ›
AB 886 (Chau) Protects Uber Passenger Privacy
SACRAMENTO – Assembly Bill 886 (Chau, D-Monterey Park) will protect the sensitive personal information and credit card records of passengers using transportation network companies (TNCs) such as Uber. Read More ›
AB 886’s Privacy Protections For Uber Passengers Held Up
Update 6/1/2015: The deadline for bills to advance from committees to the Floor passed last week, forestalling any realistic chance of reviving AB 886 this session. The bill was defeated in the Assembly Utilities and Commerce Committee April 20. Committee Chair Anthony Rendon and Assembly Members Roger Hernandez, Miguel Santiago and Das … Read More ›
AB 886 Would Protect The Privacy Of Uber Passengers
Assembly Member Chau has pulled AB 886 from consideration. He and Consumer Federation of California are considering promising alternative strategies to protect the privacy of passengers using Uber and other so-called transportation network companies. The sensitive personal data collected by Uber, for example, includes name, address, bank account information, travel logs, as well as personal address books and online search records that it pulls from passenger smartphones. It’s becoming alarmingly common for corporations to “mine” such data and share – or sell – it to other businesses. Read More ›
Stolen Uber User Logins Are For Sale On The Dark Web: Only $1 Each
by Robert Hackett, Fortune magazine
The information is being advertised for sale on the black market AlphaBay, a website that can only be accessed through the Tor browser, an anonymity-preserving network used by political dissidents, privacy-minded Internet users and criminals. One person using the alias “Courvoisier” claims to have “thousands” of “hacked accounts” for sale, each for as little as $1. Read More ›
Uber’s Business Model Could Change Your Work
by Farhad Manjoo, The New York Times
The rise of Uber-like jobs is the logical culmination of an economic and tech system that holds efficiency as its paramount virtue. … “Can you imagine if this turns into a Mechanical Turk economy, where everyone is doing piecework at all odd hours, and no one knows when the next job will come, and how much it will pay? What kind of private lives can we possibly have, what kind of relationships, what kind of families?” said Robert B. Reich, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley who was the secretary of labor during the Clinton administration. Read More ›
Who Should Inspect Lyft, Uber Cars?
by Carolyn Said, San Francisco Chronicle
Vehicle inspections have long been a bone of contention for critics of the ride-hailing services, who contend that regulations are too lax. … Several driver-mentors who do inspections for Lyft said that they received only minimal training, consisting of text and videos on their phones, and that the inspections were largely cosmetic. … Inspections for taxis are more extensive, underscoring the industry’s assertion that it doesn’t operate on a level playing ground. Read More ›
When It’s Time To Flee, Uber Raises Its Rates
by C.W. Nevius, San Francisco Chronicle
Is this just a dumb public relations miscue, or is this just the new model for startup culture? … Rather than anticipate the problem — recognize that surge pricing in an emergency is not a good policy — companies like Uber would rather just put the pedal to the metal and deal with the speed bumps when they come up. Speed bumps like these: San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón sues Uber over what he says are inadequate driver background checks. Portland, Ore., declared Uber illegal, citing a lack of adequate insurance, among other things. Uber has been sued in Madrid and banned in New Delhi. Read More ›
S.F., L.A. Sue Uber ‘To Protect Consumers’; Lyft Settles Charges
by Carolyn Said, San Francisco Chronicle
Privately held Uber last week raised $1.2 billion in funding, giving it a valuation of $40 billion — more than CBS, American Airlines or Kraft Foods. But the San Francisco company continues to anger regulators. In the past week, Uber was banned in India, Spain and Thailand and threatened with a ban in Portland, Ore. … Gascón laid out several allegations against Uber. Uber falsely claims that its driver background checks are superior to those for taxi driversUber charges passengers a $1 “safe rides fee” … and falsely claims that money goes toward “industry-leading” background checks.
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We Can’t Trust Uber
by Zeynep Tufekci and Brayden King, The New York Times (op-ed)
Uber argues that it’s doing only what other technology companies regularly do. That may be true but it only underlines why we need oversight mechanisms that cover all of them. … We need information fiduciaries: independent, external bodies that oversee how data is used, backed by laws that ensure that individuals can see, correct and opt out of data collection. The European Union has established strict controls on personal data that include provisions of privacy, limited and legitimate use and user access to their own data. That shows that accountability is possible. Read More ›
Uber’s Android App Is Reportedly Collecting a Huge Amount of Data Without Your Knowledge
by Chris Smith, BGR
Uber has been recently hit by various controversies, and it looks like the company’s PR team will have one more thing to clean up: its Android application. According to a report from Joe’s Security Blog and a post on Y Combinato’r Hacker News further detailing the matter, the official Uber Android app might be spying on users, collecting various data that it shouldn’t have access to in the first place. Read More ›
Uber and a Fraught New Era for Tech
by Christopher Mims, Wall Street Journal
So, really, why should Uber care about privacy? … I’d like to argue that a company doesn’t have to be like Uber to experience its success. But the evidence is that tech has changed. As more tech companies in name only emerge—think of all the food, infrastructure and other startups for which tech is merely an enabler—they are subject to the same savage market forces that shape every industry they attempt to disrupt. The days when we could just trust the geeks to have more or less our best interests in mind are gone. Read More ›