Privacy is a prominent and important topic that’s been in the news lately. So, whenever a company decides to change its privacy policies — especially when that company is the often maligned Uber — we take notice.
Uber ends a bad policy
You may remember that Uber angered quite a few users with its decision to collect people’s location information from the time they requested a ride until five minutes after their trip ended. Well, according to Joe Sullivan, Uber’s chief security officer, the company has decided to nix that privacy setting.
The post-trip tracking privacy feature was added in November 2016. The change was added thanks to a poorly worded question via an Uber update. The company asked “users to choose between being tracked always or never, instead of the prior ability to share location only ‘when using the app’,” TechCrunch reported.
“Users selecting ‘never’ would have to manually enter all their pick up and drop off locations — meaning opting out of the feature resulted in a significantly degraded user experience. For those feeling forced to agree to having their location ‘always’ tracked, Uber claimed it would only track users for five minutes after a trip ended — and said it wanted to do so for safety reasons, such as to improve rider picks-ups and drop-offs.”
As many Uber users know, people did not like this change. And Uber users’ dislike of the privacy update was made worse by the company’s reputation for protecting user privacy and exploiting user information, TechCrunch added.
Although the privacy change won’t be immediate for all users—it will impact iPhone app users first — it will eventually come into effect for Android app users, too.
But the change isn’t permeant … maybe
Sullivan says that the Nov. 2016 privacy change wasn’t necessarily bad… It just wasn’t well thought out.
So, if Uber ever does decide to tracker users’ data “for five minutes after drop-off in the future,” the company will “explain what the value is and allow customers to opt in to the setting, i.e. rather than pushing it as a de facto default,” TechCrunch reported.
In addition to that potential change and clarification, Sullivan also says the Uber app will also get additional privacy, security, and transparency related updates this year.
We’re still freaked
Although it’s great that Uber has taken this change “back” for now, it still may be difficult to trust a company that’s had rampant issues with sexism and sexual assaults.
As a cam model, privacy is one of your top concerns, and for good reason. The last thing you need is to worry if an Uber driver could potentially track you to your home, or be concerned that the company has a privacy breach, which could leave your information at risk.
Although we’re still concerned with Uber as a company in general, we’re happy that the business is beginning to take privacy — and its users’ concerns — more seriously.
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Abbie Stutzer is a writer and editor from Lawrence, Kansas. Find her on Twitter at @abbiestutzerand on Insta at @abbiestutzer. Email her at abbie@ynotcam.com.
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