Uber, the ride sharing service, is now investigating its top New York executive over allegations he accessed the reporter’s Uber travel records without her permission and in violation of the company’s privacy policy, reports Buzzfeed.
The news comes during a week when the company has been in crisis mode after a top executive said the company should investigate journalists.
As I wrote in a column, Uber’s siege mentality as it fights for the right to exist in cities around the world is in danger of hurting the company’s bottom line.
Farhad Manjoo, in a column for the New York Times, points out that if the Uber brand is associated with bad boy behavior, what’s stopping someone from just switching to a competing company, or gasp, hailing a cab. And it is easy enough to install an Uber competitor’s app, points out Alison Griswold of Slate.
Emil Michael, the Uber executive who floated the idea of spying on journalists, apologized, as did Travis Kalanick, Uber’s CEO.
But that didn’t stop Ashton Kutcher, the actor and an Uber investor, from coming to the company’s defense, tweeting that he agreed with investigating reporters:
This should be fun… Here comes the part where journalist explain why they should be exempt from ridicule and judgement and probing…
That brings us to the latest Uber controversy this week.
The company’s employees have access to a tracking tool called “God View,” where they can see all the available drivers and customer requests in a region.
A Buzzfeed reporter was twice made aware that her movements had been tracked, and another reporter with San Francisco magazine said that she was warned by Uber employees that executives would access her Uber travel logs.
This is a company, after all, that was able to look at its rider data and figure out in which cities people are engaging in more one night stands. In a blog post, Uber called these “Rides of Glory” and said Boston was the Rides of Glory capital.
Late Tuesday, Uber posted for the first time its data privacy policy, which the company said has long been in effect.
Image from Uber
