The 50 billion dollar valued app and company, Uber has been fined $20,000 for using a "God View" mode where it can track their users. This is an apparent breach of user security and data protection.
Uber is available in sixty countries and over 300 cities. Currently, it has rostered eight million people. Statistically, the company acquires 1 million bookings everyday.
But regardless of its success, Uber had made a little trip when it was accused of security breaches exposing information of over 50,000 drivers across the United States. And then it made another small stumble, this time because of an aerial-tracking tool the company used to track passengers.
Uber employees can look up passengers and reveal locations and destinations for those who booked the service.
This was a slip up from Josh Mohrer when she mentioned that he was tracking Uber rides and logs of rides books - all these without permission.
And with that statement, an investigation was initiated for Uber's data and security policies. The result of the investigation has fined the company $20,000.
This amount is apparently laughable for the mobile app. This fine is not connected to the God View tool used but the company has promised to be more stringent in their privacy and security profiles, calling them "protective technologies". The company is happy to have reached an agreement with the New York Attorney General.
A copy of the settlement was acquired by Buzzfeed, and reports have posted the following statement:
Uber has represented that it has removed all personally identifiable information of riders from its system that provides an aerial view of cars active in a city, has limited employee access to personally identifiable information of riders, and has begun auditing employee access to personally identifiable information in general.
Because of its billion dollar amassed success, they recently may have most likely driven the Yellow Cab business to bankruptcy.
