Uber Slapped With $20K Fine Concerning Tracking

Accusations that trickled in before, citing that Uber was guilty of abusing the aerial view of the real-time movements of its cars, otherwise known as “dubbed God View”, has culminated in a fine of $20,000 as both Uber and New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman arrived at a settlement today. At least things have finally come to a close after a long 14-month investigation.

It was in November last year that the AG’s office opened up an investigation into the alleged tracking tools of Uber’s, which happens to be an aerial map of its cars. On a separate note, Uber did inform the AG in February that as early as all the way back in May 2014, Uber had already experienced a data breach. In this data breach, Uber alleged that an unauthorized third party managed to gain entry to its driver names and license numbers, and the overall impact was assessed to cover close to 50,000 drivers, and across multiple states to boot.

The settlement today would mean that both investigations have been resolved, and on Uber’s part, they will need to fork out a $20,000 fine because they did not provide timely notice to drivers and Schneiderman’s office concerning the data breach. Apart from that, Uber is now required to encrypt its geo-location information while adopting multi-factor authentication.

Edwin Kee
Categories: General
Tags: Legal, Uber