The rideshare and taxi service Uber has had a very public and turbulent end to 2014. From privacy abuse allegations and Congressional scrutiny, to public protests and all-out bans in certain countries, the San Francisco-based, mobile-app-focused company has managed to retain its valuation of $40 billion. The company, which provides its service in 45 countries and over 200 cities, ran into trouble after a Buzzfeed report detailed November 14th remarks by the company’s Senior Vice President Emil Micahel who spoke of his desire to dig up dirt on the personal lives of journalists critical of the company. In particular was the intent to spread the personal details of one Sarah Lacey, editor of the Silicon Valley website PandoDaily. The Buzzfeed report also detailed the examination of private travel records of a reporter by an Uber executive. The combination of the aggressively toned nature of the comments and the willingness of the company to access user’s personal data gave rise to the November trending hashtag #Ubergate.
The Buzzfeed report subjected the company to greater scrutiny, which led to several revelations regarding its use of users’ location data. These included the discovery by a Uber user that the company was displaying his live location data at an Uber Chicago launch party as part of the guest entertainment; reporting by the Washington Post that Uber granted a job candidate full employee-level access to user data and records in Uber’s Washington, DC office – access which lasted for several hours after the interview; and a report by Buzzfeed of the existence of a God View, which let Uber executives track not only the company’s cars, but the pick-up and drop-off locations of customers who had requested a car via their cellphones’ mobile apps.
This turned out to be a pretty big deal as, for all practical purposes, there exist no regulations governing how companies can collect, use and sell location data. Currently, all that exists is draft legislation created by Senator Al Franken, chair of the US Senate Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law. The Location Privacy Protection Act of 2014 seeks to require user permission when an app requests location data, and grant users some control over what companies can do with that data. It has made little progress in Congress, however, over the past two years. As outlined in the Post’s article, this type of location information is a treasure trove for advertisers seeking to gain a broader understanding of the details of a potential customer. More importantly, it is a prime target for a cybersecurity breach. Such detailed and historical location data tells a lot about a person – where they go, who they visit, and oftentimes the very nature of relationships. All of this metadata is being housed on the servers of a company whose only obligation to secure the data is its own privacy policy, which Uber can unilaterally amend at any time. This lack of oversight prompted Senator Franken to pen a series of detailed questions to Uber’s CEO Travis Kalanik, including why the company held onto users’ data indefinitely; and what constituted a “legitimate business use” in regards to sharing users’ sensitive location data. The company responded to this recent critical attention by hiring a security expert to review its privacy policy, limiting employee access to the “God View”, and submitting a reply to Senator Franken’s questions (though evidently not with the level of detail the Senator had hoped).
These privacy and location data concerns seem certain to spill into the new year. And more problems continue to plague the company, including: an expected outright ban in France in 2015 of the company’s lower-tier service “Uber-Pop”; a ban in India after rape allegations against an Uber driver; and allegations of price gouging in Sydney, Australia during the December 15th café hostage situation. How Uber will emerge from this downturn in public opinion remains to be seen, but it seems likely the company will have to take definitive steps to regain the trust of its users, regulators and legitimately define its place in the industry it threatens to upend if it hopes to retain is $40 billion valuation.
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