Uber users: Do you know you were followed? App breaches your privacy again.

The recent fall of the anonymous messaging app Sarahah was that the app was compromising on users’ privacy. The app used to constantly upload users’ contacts and email addresses without prior notifications. What if another of your favorite transit app is doing the same, an app that is the world leader in transportation services?

The ride hailing app Uber is spying upon you. The app has been accused of tracking its users even after the journeys have been completed. This might prove potentially harmful in case the information is misused and might invite stalking activities. The transportation app used to collect the users’ location information even when it ran in background. This kind of allegations had been a regular partner of the ride hailing app.

The travel app is revamping its applications’ tracking feature which was part of its privacy settings that were launched on previously in November and looks not to have been liked by customers.

The Uber administration has now empowered the iOS users to choose between they wish to be traced or not by sending them prompts to enable or disable the feature. The updates will be soon rolled out to Android users too.

The travel app collection of user’s location that caught many customers by surprise was that the app used to track the customers whereabouts even after five minutes of completion of journey. The old privacy settings have been altered with these new options.

The app will now display three different options to users:

• Always: This will facilitate the app to collect your data from the beginning of the trip to the end of the journey.
• While using app: This option transfers the location details of the user till the app is running (app appears on screen).
• Never: The user’s location isn’t shared with Uber, even the details of pick up and end point of journey have to be annually entered.

Earlier only two options were provided to the customers were Always or Never was allowed.

Uber was found saying that the 5 minute tracking feature was never activated on the iOS version of the app and on the android version of the app the feature was disabled within months after it was initiated on the devices.

The company officially said that the feature worked to provide safety to the customers while the feature for many users turn out a harrowing experience as if someone was monitoring their activities.

The company had served similar allegations even before. Uber was accused of another tracking technique called fingerprinting. The app used to secretly identify and tag iphones even after the app has been deleted and devices erased in a report by New York Times in April. This was in violations of the Apple’s privacy guidelines.

Two weeks ago the app again made headlines for entering into an agreement with Federal Trade Commission. The charges were that the company "deceived consumers by failing to monitor employee access to consumer personal information and by failing to reasonably secure sensitive consumer data stored in the cloud."

Summarizing:

Any company as big as Uber should maintain its quality in delivering services to the customer whereas privacy is an equally important concern in delivering services, repeated offences were registered against the company still the company does not learns from its previous experiences.

It is now up to the users to decide how to take action for their privacy security. The cab service provider do not corrects itself even after being reprimanded; the users should now take the matter in their hands because it’s them who lose upon privacy not Uber or authorities.

Privacy is an important issue and that should be understood by application development companies too who are to provide privacy features.

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