Several recent reports of abuse of user data by Uber are renewing calls to tighten regulations on apps that have access to users’ locations and other sensitive information, according to The Hill.
BuzzFeed News and Forbes have both reported on Uber’s “God View” feature that allows employees to see where any user is driving at the moment. According to Forbes, whenever the company hosts a “lavish launch party” in a new city, they let their cocktail-sipping guests watch a map of Uber cars moving across the city.
One problem: The users’ names weren’t always blocked out.
“I recognized about half of the names,” one attendee told Forbes.
And when BuzzFeed reporter Johana Bhuiyan met the general manager of Uber New York, Josh Mohrer, at his office, he was waiting for her outside when her Uber ride pulled up.
“There you are,” he told her. “I was tracking you.”
Bhuiyan had never given Mohrer permission to track her. He has since been placed under investigation by the company for violating their privacy rules.
Other similar companies, like Lyft, have also been criticized for sharing user data too freely among their employees. Lyft recently adopted a new “tiered access” policy to resolve some of these concerns.
Some regulators say this all proves the need for strict regulation of apps that would limit what they can do with user information. Sen. Al Franken’s Location Privacy Protection Act would make it illegal for companies to collect user data without permission.
“The reports suggest a troubling disregard for customers’ privacy, including the need to protect their sensitive geolocation data,” Franken wrote recently of Uber’s controversy.
But others worry that regulation will only add pointless barriers to new technology, and unnecessarily burden apps. Most people are already aware that they trade a good deal of information in exchange for access to free apps.
“We can write narrow criminal statutes to target bad acts and bad actors rather than targeting technology itself, which is essentially neutral and in many cases its benefits outweigh its potential burdens,” Tim Sparapani, vice president of a trade group that includes Lyft, told the Hill.
And as the backlash against Uber in recent days has proven, sheer public outcry could very well force misbehaving companies to regulate themselves.
