Uber: Its Labor Ruling In California, Lawsuits, And Privacy Concerns

During June, Uber, the ride-sharing company, has been in the news for a variety of reasons. Many consumers like the ride-sharing service as an alternative to tradition taxi-cabs. Uber is one of the largest ride-sharing services with about 8 million users worldwide and 160,000 drivers in the United States.

First, in March the State of California Labor Commission ruled that Uber drivers are employees and not independent contractors, as the company claimed. The ruling became public after the company appealed the original decision. In the original complaint, an Uber driver filed a claim for reimbursement of $4,152.00 of expenses.

The issues are worthy noting. Time reported:

"... the ruling is non-binding, has no legal bearing on any other drivers, and won’t force any money to change hands. But Uber’s decision to appeal will now move the fight to California’s court system where — along with several similar lawsuits pending in the state..."

One of several pending lawsuits:

"Uber has essentially shifted to its workers all the costs of running a business, the costs of owning a car, maintaining a car, paying for gas,” says Shannon Liss-Riordan, a Boston-based attorney who has a class-action case pending against Uber in California federal court. “Uber has saved massive amounts …. It’s important that the labor laws be enforced so that the companies can’t take advantage of workers that way. Uber’s a $50-billion company and I think it can afford to bear the responsibilities of an employer...”

Second, a new Uber policy bans firearms in its vehicles. KRJH in Tulsa, Oklahoma reported:

"Uber drivers and passengers have to follow a new company policy. Uber has banned all firearms from any vehicle used for its service. The policy comes two months after an Uber driver shot a man who was firing into a crowd of people in a Chicago neighborhood. The Uber driver had a concealed carry license and was not charged with a crime, but it raised the question of safety and comfort for its drivers and riders."

Third, the Electronic Privacy Rights Center (EPIC) has filed a complaint with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) about Uber's upcoming privacy policy amendments to both collect more data about its customers and to track customers. Uber's new Privacy Policy goes into effect on July 15:

Location Information: When you use the Services for transportation or delivery, we collect precise location data about the trip from the Uber app used by the Driver. If you permit the Uber app to access location services through the permission system used by your mobile operating system (“platform”), we may also collect the precise location of your device when the app is running in the foreground or background. We may also derive your approximate location from your IP address."

"Contacts Information: If you permit the Uber app to access the address book on your device through the permission system used by your mobile platform, we may access and store names and contact information from your address book to facilitate social interactions through our Services and for other purposes described in this Statement or at the time of consent or collection."

The sharing of customers' information by Uber seems extensive:

"We may share your information: With Uber subsidiaries and affiliated entities that provide services or conduct data processing on our behalf, or for data centralization and / or logistics purposes; With vendors, consultants, marketing partners, and other service providers who need access to such information to carry out work on our behalf; In response to a request for information by a competent authority if we believe disclosure is in accordance with, or is otherwise required by, any applicable law, regulation, or legal process; With law enforcement officials, government authorities, or other third parties if we believe your actions are inconsistent with our User agreements, Terms of Service, or policies, or to protect the rights, property, or safety of Uber or others; In connection with, or during negotiations of, any merger, sale of company assets, consolidation or restructuring, financing, or acquisition of all or a portion of our business by or into another company..."

Words to focus upon include vendors, consultants, marketing partners, and other service providers. That can include a lot of companies anywhere. Note: that sharing is in addition to any sharing you may perform with social networking sites.

You may remember that ethics and privacy issues surfaced after news reports in 2014 about Uber allegedly using customer and tracking data it collected to target journalists critical of the service.

The EPIC complaint filed with the FTC (Adobe PDF) stated:

"19. Uber will also collect precise location information if the app is operating in the background. On phones running iOS, this means that Uber may be able collect location data even after an app has been terminated by the user."

"20. Even if a user disables the GPS location services on their phone, the company may still derive approximate location from riders’ IP addresses."

"21. This collection of user’s information far exceeds what customers expect from the transportation service. Users would not expect the company to collect location information when customers are not actively using the app, or have turned off their GPS location finder (as Uber can still collect location information through the phones’ IP addresses)..."

"24. Uber claims that it will allow users to opt-out of these features. However, this change in business practices places an unreasonable burden on consumers and is not easy to exercise: while iOS users can later disable the contact syncing option by changing the contacts setting on their mobile devices, the Android platform does not provide any such setting..."

"31. Job interviewees have been granted provisional access all the customer location data available to full-time employees, allowing non-Uber employees to temporarily track any customer. One such interviewee was granted this access for an entire day, even after the job interview ended. He admitted using the database to search records of people he knew, including politician’s relatives."

Based upon the new privacy policy, the tracking and data collection seems very invasive since it will also occur when customers aren't using the service. It seems invasive because the address book collection includes people who aren't Uber customers, didn't agree to the data collection, can't opt out of the collection, and have no control over how their contact information is used. Based upon the company's history, Uber executives seem to play fast and loose with consumers' personal private information.

If you don't like the privacy invasion, there are several resources online about how to cancel and delete your Uber account: C/Net, Reddit, and wikiHow.

What are your opinions of Uber's new privacy policy?