Uber Mistakenly exposed the private knowledge Of hundreds Of Drivers

Uber, the arena’s most dear startup, just made an incredible gaffe: The experience-hailing company by accident released the non-public data of tons of of its drivers, allegedly leaking social security numbers, scans of drivers’ licenses, taxi certification types, and different non-public information. in step with Motherboard, the leak was once first stated with the aid of drivers on Tuesday, and was related to the unlock of Uber’s new partner app for drivers.

“We had been notified a few computer virus impacting a fraction of our U.S. drivers previous this afternoon,” an Uber spokesperson said in a commentary to Motherboard. “inside 30 minutes our security group had fixed the issue.” Uber says the breach impacted 674 drivers in the U.S., and that lower than a thousand paperwork were compromised. The leaked knowledge used to be handiest proven to drivers who had been logged into their accounts on the companion app, Uber claims.

One driver told Motherboard that he detected the problem while uploading a record to the app; he refreshed the page and used to be proven a whole bunch of paperwork from fellow Uber drivers. “after I regarded nearer, it could have been the database of Uber drivers which are taxicab drivers that have get admission to to Uber,” he informed Motherboard. “there have been a number of taxi certification types and livery drivers licenses and W-9 forms with Social security numbers for taxi cab companies.”

there is no proof, in the meanwhile, that Uber’s information landed in the fallacious fingers, or that any of the drivers have misused the ideas they’d get admission to to. however Uber drivers have reason to be concerned: the company hasn’t validated that person privacy is high of thoughts, in step with Motherboard. ultimate week, Uber patched up a massive security flaw that gave hackers continued get right of entry to to person bills even after passwords had been modified. And prior this yr, Uber customers had complained for months that they had been getting charged for trips they failed to make. In March, Motherboard had suggested that a variety of Uber consumer money owed had been being sold on the net, using stolen login knowledge.

With the rampant data breaches that now plague corporations and even executive entities, it can be crucial that a tech large like Uber deal with safety issues effectively—with out unintentionally leaking its own knowledge and contributing to the issue.

On Wednesday, Uber introduced a partnership with e-commerce platform Shopify, to offer same-day delivery for providers in big apple, Chicago, and San Francisco. the company’s courier provider, UberRush, first launched ultimate yr solely in new york.

[by means of BBC]