UBER continues to be in the News for the wrong reasons – licensing issues, working conditions and pay for the drivers and data security.

But, are UBER maintaining customer data and driver data securely?

UBER suffered a huge data breach in 2016. The records of 57 million customers and drivers  were accessed by a hacker.

Uber only publicly disclosed the existence of the data breach in November 2017 close to a year after learning that hackers had infiltrated their systems.

The Uber Business

Between 2009 and 2016, UBER received around $11.5 billion in venture capital and private equity investment. It operates in 83 countries and 674 cities. UBER’s gross revenue in 2016 is reported to be about $20 billion.

UBER has 160,000 active drivers of which 14% are female. The drivers earn an average of $364 per month.

Uber’s Response

Uber said that of the 57 million people’s records accessed, about 2.7 million are British although it cannot be sure as it doesn’t always know the home country of its customers. Uber has about 5 million Britons on its systems.

For UK users, Uber stated that the affected data is names, mobile phone numbers and email addresses. The experts hired by Uber to investigate the data breach did not believe customers’ financial details were leaked.

However, its use may make other scams, such as bogus emails or calls appear more credible. People should continue to be vigilant and follow the advice from the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC).

Uber says it is waiting for technical reports which should give full confirmation of the figures and the type of personal data that has been compromised.

Uber say “We are continuing to work with the NCSC plus other relevant authorities in the UK and overseas to ensure the data protection interests of UK citizens are upheld.”. The UK’s data protection commissioner expects Uber to alert affected users as it gets more information.

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