Uber Says It Has received five experiences Of Rape in view that December 2012

Uber says that its customer service arm recieved five claims of rape and about a hundred and seventy claims of sexual assault between December 2012 and August 2015. The experience-hailing firm supplied the numbers to BuzzFeed news as a rebuttal to leaked screenshots of its customer support platform, which express separate search queries for “rape” and “sexual assault,” each and every returning lots of inquiries from buyers.

The excessive choice of search results for these phrases, Uber wrote in a response posted on Medium, could also be due to inquiries by way of consumers and drivers with the letters that make up the word “rape” of their names, such as “Don Draper;” expressions like “you raped my pockets”; and inquiries from “passengers who got into vehicles no longer on the Uber platform, or who have been discussing unsubstantiated media reports of sexual assaults.”

Uber declined a request from BuzzFeed information to study the data diagnosis procedure that determines how many claims of rape and sexual assault had been said. Uber also declined to supply direct get entry to to the data or present any information about the complaints it has bought.

The startup defended these actions in its blog put up, which used to be signed by chief safety officer Joe Sullivan, VP of communications and public policy Jill Hazelbaker, and vp of worldwide strengthen Tim Collins: “it is unfair to signify that you simply can not trust the veracity of the numbers Uber has equipped without in my view verifying them, which would be a serious breach of our riders’ and drivers’ privacy.”

The screenshots have been leaked amid challenge about passenger safety in taxis and vehicles hired through journey-hailing apps. Uber, which mentioned it had one hundred sixty,000 lively drivers in the U.S. on the end of 2014, has argued that its app provides riders with additional safety as a result of they may be able to see driver knowledge sooner than they get into the automobile and each travel is GPS tracked, but others have criticized the kind of historical past check that app-based automobile dispatchers use, which does now not embody a fingerprint component.

In NY city, which had 132,219 licensed for-hire drivers at the end of 2014, there have been 14 mentioned rapes within taxicabs, livery cabs, or other for-rent vehicles closing year.

update: Uber updated its weblog submit with the next remark: “Zendesk, one among our purchaser fortify systems, contacted us to claim that their search software would not return a reputation similar to “Don Draper” when attempting to find the word “rape.” on the other hand, such a search would (and did) return names that start with the letters R,A,P,E — despite the fact that the ticket itself had nothing to do with a claim of rape. We ask for forgiveness to Zendesk for the usage of a less than perfect (and fictitious) instance that doesn’t thoroughly signify their search performance.”