Tuesday 24 April 2018

Uber No Longer Trust Their Drivers With Your Pick Up Or Drop Off Details.


Apparently, Uber no longer trust their drivers with your pick up and drop off destination. They announced today that they are to hide pick up and drop off details on the journey notes. 
The changes come after customers going train stations (or to the airport) have complained of burglaries on their return.

Passengers have also complained of sexual harassment from drivers who "know where you live".

In a small change which could improve the peace of mind of its passengers, Uber will now obscure the exact pick-up and drop-off locations in its drivers’ records.

What it is: 
After this feature goes live, drivers will no longer have a record of precisely where they picked you up and dropped you off. Instead the app will show them the general vicinity of each location.
This procedure is becoming increasing like a street hail, which is illegal.

According to Gizmodo, this feature will roll out around the same time as Uber’s new driver app is out for everyone, which should be within the next few weeks.

The details: 
Uber’s making the change in order to comply with the EU’s new General Data Protection Regulation. While the drivers will still need something for their records — something to show they did, indeed pick up a passenger in Area X and drop them off in Area Y at specific times — they’ll no longer retain your exact records.

Why it matters: 
While participating in a rideshare does mean you have to place enough implicit trust in a person to get into a car with them and let them drive you places, it doesn’t necessarily mean you want them to have a record of your location. This is particularly true if the one of the places in question is your home or work.

In the article by Gizmodo, the commentator states:
On the one occasion I Ubered alone, I had the driver drop me off at a location down the street and pretended to linger on the sidewalk with a phone call while he drove off. It wasn’t that I had anything against that person in particular — I just preferred that someone with whom I exchanged two sentences and made fleeting eye contact with in a rearview mirror not know my Airbnb’s location.

It’s not a catch-all solution:
It doesn’t prevent a driver from remembering your locations. Still, it’s a step towards giving wary passengers some sense of safety. Especially after it was revealed that 13,000 Uber drivers haven't had the proper criminal record checks with their TfL licenses. The fact that the rape of Uber passengers by drivers rose last year by 50% makes the service one of the most unsafe forms of travel in London.



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