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Uber Leaks Information of Millions, Covers It Up for Over a Year, New CEO Promises Change (Again)
It’s no secret that Uber isn’t very popular lately—it was banned from operating in London due to its “lack of corporate responsibility,” had to find a new CEO after the original, Travis Kalanick, was pushed out of his position by company investors (although he is still on the board), and has just generally been wracked by scandal after scandal.
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Unfortunately for the company, though, that shadow coming over the horizon isn’t a raincloud to put out the fire of the company’s reputation, but instead a big, spinning heap of fuel for the flames.
That’s because it has come to light that the ridesharing company, more than a year ago, was hacked, with names, emails, phone numbers, and driver’s license numbers of more than 50 million riders and 7 million drivers stolen.
So, how did Uber, which at the time was dealing with US regulators in an investigation on suspicion of privacy violations for not disclosing a data breach back in 2014, deal with the crisis?
It paid the hackers $100,000 as both a payment to delete the information and hush money. Uber said that it doesn’t think that the information was ever used, but refused to release the identity of the attackers.
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In response to this coming to light, New York’s Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has launched an investigation into the hack, the company is being sued for negligence by a customer trying to reach class-action status, and the new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi released a statement, explaining the breach and the company’s current response, including firing two of those involved and offering free credit monitoring and identity theft protection to the drivers whose information was stolen.
He ended by saying, similar to the company’s statement to London, “None of this should have happened, and I will not make excuses for it. While I can’t erase the past, I can commit on behalf of every Uber employee that we will learn from our mistakes. We are changing the way we do business, putting integrity at the core of every decision we make and working hard to earn the trust of our customers.”
News Sources: Jalopnik, Bloomberg, Uber
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