Uber is not exactly a company who is averse to controversy. Although their service is used by a significant number of passengers, it seems the company just cannot stay out of the limelight. And more often than not, for the wrong reasons. Uber has continually been facing accusations of all kinds and are seeing themselves battling a number of cases in court, from all angles. That said, the service does go on and passengers are making use of the private driver facility and in spite of reports suggesting the business is losing money.
That said, in an age of data privacy concerns, an interesting issue began to be noticed over the last couple of days with Uber. The issue revolved around the “Share Your ETA” feature offered within the app. In short, you have the ability to share your eta information with those that might want to know. Say for instance, the person you are en route to. However, it had been noted recently that when users were publicly sharing their ETA details, their trip information was being cached and showing up in search results. Anyone typing trip.uber.com into Google would be presented with a number of trip details. It was being reported that information including the passenger’s name, driver’s name, photo, licence plate and car model could all be picked up from the search results. Not to mention, in the page’s source code, it would seem personal information such as passenger addresses were also visible.
Well, for those wondering, it does seem now that the problem has been fixed. At least, that is what is today being confirmed by an Uber spokesperson. At present, there are no details being provided as to what was causing the issue or why it took so long for it to be noticed or fixed, but either way, the latest is that it is fixed. Now, it would seem that any ETA information shared by an Uber user will automatically expire after 48 hours. Of course, reports like this are unlikely to help Uber in their continued fight to operate, but they do prove as a warning for those using the service and especially using the Share Your ETA feature.