Uber News: Company Ends Tracking of Riders After Their Trip Has Ended
Uber Technologies Inc. is taking down their transportation app's feature that allows it to track their passengers long after their trip has ended.
Once Uber has taken down this feature, the app will return back to allowing the user to share their location data only when they're booking a trip, CNBC confirmed. The fixed version of the Uber app is expected to be announced by next week and will be first rolled out to Apple users.
"The change, which restores users' ability to share location data only while using the app, is expected to be announced on Tuesday and rolled out to iPhone users starting this week. It comes as Uber tries to recover from a series of crises culminating in the ouster of Chief Executive Travis Kalanick and other top executives," Uber shared with Reuters.
The feature that allowed the app to track their users even after their trip ended was included when Uber made an update in November last year. The app made users choose between always having their location data collected or not at all.
Uber needed permission to always collect the location data of their riders to track them up until five minutes after their trip has ended. The transportation services company believed that it would be a great help in keeping their riders safe. If the users chose not to have their location data collected, they would have to manually check in their pick-up and drop-off points, which ended up being an inconvenience as well.
However, the said safety feature was met with backlash and privacy advocates, as well as some of their app users, voiced out about how Uber was committing a breach of trust among their users.
Also, instead of tracking their users for only five minutes after their trip ended, the app was still gathering their location data up to days or even weeks after a certain ride, 9to5mac confirmed.
Uber's chief security officer, Joe Sullivan, said that their company made a mistake by not explaining the value of tracking their riders after their trip has ended. Sullivan also said that Uber was grounded in respecting their rider's privacy. However, they still have "a lack of expertise" in that area.
