Tag: Uber
27. December 2018
Uber’s major data breach of 2016 still has consequences as it has also been addressed by the French Data Protection Authority “CNIL”.
As reported in November 2017 and September 2018, the company had tried to hide that personal data of 50 million Uber customers had been stolen and chose to pay the hackers instead of disclosing the incident to the public.
1,4 million French customers were affected as well which is why the CNIL has now fined Uber 400K Euros (next to the settlement with the US authorities amounting to $148 Million).
The CNIL came to find out that the breach could have been avoided by implementing certain basic security measures such as stronger authentication.
Great Britain and the Netherlands have also already imposed a fine totalling €1 million.
28. September 2018
Due to an initially concealed data breach in 2016, the U.S. company Uber has to pay a fine of €126 million, as the Attorney General Barbara Underwood announced in a statement.
On November 21, 2017, Uber announced that a hacker attack would take place in 2016, in which the hackers would capture approximately 50 million customer data as well as seven million data from Uber drivers. The company paid the hackers blackmail money instead of reporting the data breach (we reported).
Now a settlement was reached between Uber and the relevant US authorities. The settlement includes the highest fine ever imposed, $148 million (€126 million), flanked by further obligations to improve data security.
22. November 2017
Uber just admitted that hackers stole personal data of 50 million Uber customers and 7 million drivers. The data breach happened in October 2016, over a year ago, but was only published this week.
The data include names, e-mail addresses, phone numbers and the license numbers of 600.000 drivers. According to Uber neither social security numbers, nor credit card information, or trip location details were taken.
Uber did not disclose the data breach to public, as required by data protection law, but paid the hackers 100.000,00 $ to delete the information. Uber assumes that the data was not used.
Referring to Uber the hackers came in through a badly protected database in a cloud service to the data. Uber security Chief Joe Sullivan and another manager lost their jobs.
This data breach wasn’t the first incident that happened to Uber. Uber has a well-documented history of abusing consumer privacy.
Uber said it has hired Matt Olsen, former general counsel at the National Security Agency and director of the National Counterterrorism Center, as an adviser. He will help the company restructure its security teams.
17. November 2016
This week, Reuters reported that U.S. internet companies, such as Facebook and Amazon have sent a detailied letter including a list of their policiy priorities to President-elect Donald Trump. Among the topics of these policies are encryption, immigration reform and maintaining liability protections from user’s content.
The mentioned letter was sent by the so called Internet Association, which is a group of 40 members, also including Alphabet’s Google, Uber and Twitter. The letter tries to repair the relationship between the internet giants and Trump due to the fact that he was almost universally disliked during the presidential campaign.
The president of the Internet Association, Michael Beckermann signed the letter talking about “The internet industry looks forward to engaging in an open and productive dialogue”. Furthermore, Beckerman issued a statement syaing that the internet industry looked forward to working closely with Trump and lawmakers in Congress in order to “cement the internet’s role as a driver of economic and social progress for future generations.”
The letter describes some of the policies which go along with Trump’s prior statements, for example easing the regulation on the sharing economy and applying pressure on Europe to not erect too many barriers that restrict U.S. internet companies from growing in that market.
However, other topics are likely to be opposed with Trump’s campaign as he offered numerous broadsides against the tech sector.
14. June 2016
Accoring to the New York Times, Uber was fined €800,000, about $900,000, plus court fees, which adds to a total over $1 million, for running an illegal transport service and breaking privacy laws in France.
Half of those sanctions that Uber has to pay are “suspended sentences,” which means that Uber only needs to pay 50 percent of the fines as long as there are no further breaches of the law.
On top of that, Uber’s EMEA director Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Coty and Thibaud Simphal, the French company’s boss, were fined €30,000, about $34,000, and €20,000, about $22,500. The two men were detained for questioning by French authorities a year ago.
