Your Next Ride Might Be Used by The Government and Third Parties to Track Your Steps
By: Felipe Palhares
April 21, 2016
Link: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/12/uber-us-regulators-data-passengers-report
Taking a ride with Uber might reveal more than you think about your whereabouts, especially to the government and to regulatory agencies. Uber has recently disclosed that state and local transport agencies requested data of more than 11 million user accounts and half a million drivers between July and December. This includes GPS coordinates, route maps and addresses.
Although this data is supposedly anonymized, thus not direct revealing the name of the users, it is not clear exactly what data is being informed by Uber to the authorities besides those identified above and this could impose a great concern regarding the privacy of Uber’s users. Even if users’ names are not disclosed, it should not be difficult to discover this information after looking through the other kind of data being disclosed to the regulators. If Uber is being forced to reveal the model and color of the car, plate numbers and a specific ID number unique to each user, it would only take a little bit of research and surveillance to allow someone to discover their real identity.
Furthermore, considering that you can set your home and work address to your Uber account, those data could also be used to easily match an ID number to a person’s identity. The implications of this type of data being provided to third parties are fairly dangerous. For one, according to the article some of the data is available to the public through record requests, which means that anyone could discover where you live, where you work, the places you frequent, how often you frequent these places, what time of the day you usually leave home and what time you come back, along with a lot of other information that you might not want to have disclosed to the world.
After all, the places that you frequent might reveal a lot about you, such as your political, religion and sexual preferences, aspects of your life that you would not expect to have revealed only for choosing to take a ride with Uber. This could also be dangerous for your safety. According to a study conducted by the CDC (National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey: 2010 Summary Report), one in 6 women (16.2%) and one in 19 men (5.2%) in the United States have experienced stalking victimization at some point during their lifetime. Hence, revealing your whereabouts to the public could allow stalkers to track you more easily and increase unnecessary risks to your personal safety.
Moreover, if this data is immediately available for everyone, or at least for the authorities, it could also be used by the government or the police to track your steps and investigate your life without applying for or being granted a search warrant. Therefore, collecting and providing all this information to transport regulators upon blank requests without explaining why the information is needed raises serious concerns about users’ privacy. This should be clearly and expressly communicated to users, allowing them to make an informed decision before calling their next Uber ride.