Uber Got a Laughable Fine and a Slap on the Wrist

Uber got a laughable fine and a slap on the wrist – $20.000 for a company that is worth $50 billion is just despicable.

Uber has been fined just $20.000 for their God View tool, which tracks users, and also for the company’s security practices, data hack.

The popular ride-hailing company came under scrutiny after an investigation from, get this, Buzzfeed. The way the firm handles the sensitive user data is worrisome but it doesn’t appear so to the judge ruling the case.

Considering that in 2014 a security breach exposed the data of 50.000 drivers across the US, just sanctions were not taken.

Besides the mere fine, Uber was forced to agree on adopting more rigorous security and privacy practices. This means that from now on, all of their riders will have their geo-location data encrypted, as well as being password-protected.

The security breach started when an Uber engineer uploaded an access ID to the firm’s 3rd party cloud service onto popular Git repository hosting service GitHub – unbeknownst to the Uber employee that it was available to the public. This happened on, or sometime surrounding, the date of May 12, 2014.

Yet, Uber reported the incident on February 26, 2015, and that’s because they received a tip from a former employee of a competitor, which noted that the competing company had full access to a Uber security key.

Talk about being super sloppy.

The ride-sharing company claims that it took immediate action to revoke said existing access ID from their system, and issued a new one. The firm notes that, since then, it has implement a variety of encryptions and other such authentication controls, as well as hiring additional security personal and offering more, and better security training.

Because it has failed to announce this security breach, Uber received a $20.000 slap on the wrist for ” unreasonable delay”.

In other news, Yellow Cab, which is San Francisco’s largest taxi company, has just filed for bankruptcy due to competition from Lyft and Uber, as well as including several unresolved court cases.

It seems that ride-hailing companies will most definitely surpass the traditional taxi’s popularity. GM stands by that statement, and has funded Lyft with $500 million, thus helping them with their development of self-driving cars, which General Motors thinks is the future.

As reports start pouring that autonomous vehicles will be a thing by 2030, more and more car manufacturers start jumping on the bandwagon with either development or funding companies that have already begun the process.

Apple, Google, and Tesla are among the first and considered top competitors in the autonomous vehicles industry.

Image Source: 1

Bio
Latest Posts

Roxanne Briean

I am a geek, a gamer and a writer. I have always been fascinated with the online community. At the moment I work as a full-time writer and study interior design. When I'm not scouring the net in search of interesting new gadgets and software I spend my time in MOBAs or drawing.