Uber recently updated its Terms of Use, and it is outright unethical and grossly violates user’s right to their own data.
This is what it says:
Any User Content provided by you remains your property. However, by providing User Content to Uber, you grant Uber a worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, transferable, royalty-free license, with the right to sublicense, to use, copy, modify, create derivative works of, distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, and otherwise exploit in any manner such User Content in all formats and distribution channels now known or hereafter devised (including in connection with the Services and Uber’s business and on third-party sites and services), without further notice to or consent from you, and without the requirement of payment to you or any other person or entity.
Uber is ridiculously callous about using and selling user data to its own benefit, with no regards to privacy and security, so much so that, one Hacker News post, called the company’s Android app as “literally malware.”
In April, there were also reports that the company had shared 14 million users’ info with the US government, which by its own admission “can sometimes compromise riders’ privacy.”
But should it really bother users, especially when there is not much info we update on the app?
It should, because, Uber doesn’t just uses the data you update, but also data that’s on your phone.
Here’s the list of all the data the company collects through its Android app:
- Accounts log (Email)
- App Data Usage
- Phone’s Battery Info
- GPS
- MMS
- SMS
- PhoneCall (call duration, called at, from number, phone call type, to number)
- WifiConnection (BSSID, IP, linkspeed, MAC addr, network ID, RSSI, SSID)
- WifiNeighbors (BSSID, capabilities, frequency, level, SSID)
And more.
