Uber and the popular ridesharing firm’s new CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, has another mess to clean up thanks to the former CEO Travis Kalanik. The company revealed to Bloomberg News that they hid the fact they paid hackers to cover up a data breach in October 2016.
Unbelievable…
The hackers reportedly tried to extort Uber after they obtained the personal information of 57 million customers and drivers. The hackers demanded that the company pay them $100,000 to delete the compromised information. Uber being the sneaky company it was at the time chose to pay instead of reporting the hackers to the authorities.
In response, the company has fired Chief Security Officer, Joe Sullivan and one of his deputies, Senior Lawyer Craig Clark, for their roles in the cover-up. Dara Khosrowshahi in a statement said about the breach “none of this should have happened, and I will not make excuses for it.We are changing the way we do business.” This is not the first time the ride-sharing firm tried to hide a data breach. They were fined $20,000 in January 2016 by the New York Attorney General for failing to inform about a data breach in a timely manner.
The company was working with the FTC to reach a privacy settlement and finally agreed to one with the FTC three months ago without any wrongdoing. This recent revelation about this new hack will probably change that more than likely and deservingly so. Uber has been notoriously shady with their business 2009. Five criminal probes have been opened by the U.S, looking into company taking possible bribes, shady pricing schemes, illicit software and possible theft of intellectual property.
Oh, and we can’t forget the many civil suits that were thrown their way as well. The U.S. isn’t the only country looking into Uber, the U.K. and the National Crime Agency are also investigating the breach. Across the pond, London, as well as other governments, are trying to cancel Uber completely because of their suspect behavior.
Even though there is no evidence the hackers used the information, Uber has some serious explaining to do and Lyft is looking even better now. Are we canceling Uber? Or Nah?
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Photo: Uber
