In a Nov. 21 report, the ride sharing service Uber disclosed that 57 million riders and drivers had personal information stolen by hackers last year. Some of the information stolen included phone numbers, email addresses and personal identities. In addition to the personal information stolen, 600,000 license numbers were recovered by the hackers as well.
The popular app is widely used by college students and adults across the United States.
“I hope the app is safe because I use Uber almost every day,” Cabrini student Kayla Hunt said.
“I use Uber so much that I know that issues will come up, so I don’t really care,” Cabrini student Geneva Stone said.
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi reported that the hackers accessed the data by using a third-party service. The information was taken from Uber’s GitHub account, a service used by companies to help store codes.
The GitHub account is where the hackers found an Uber username and password, ultimately leading them to user data being stored on an Amazon server.
The two unnamed hackers demanded Uber to sacrifice $100,000 in return for the information. Although it is suggested to companies such as Uber to report hacks like these to law enforcement, they ignored.
Instead of making the situation known, the company covered it up by granting the hackers their $100,000 request. This caused most of the uproar within the Uber community, as it took almost a full year for anything to be officially reported.
Clementine Mottola, an Uber driver in the Greater Philadelphia area, claims that even after the hack was reported by the company, they did not inform the drivers.
“Luckily, I was unaffected by the hack, but I feel as my information is never 100 percent safe on any kind of technology,” Mottola said.
It is quite possible that Uber will be face legal trouble with federal and state agencies for leaving the breach unreported. The hack not only affected United States users, but it also made an impact in the United Kingdom as well.
“I was never really sure how safe my identity really was, but this worries me,” Cabrini student Marie Camara said.
This is not the first time the company has been in trouble with the law, as Uber has faced a good deal of controversy throughout its operating years. Between many rape and abuse cases involving its drivers, this case only makes the black eye bigger for Uber.
“Honestly, I’m the one taking the risk. If I’m getting somewhere cheap and safe, I’m fine,” Stone said.
