Uber Technologies Inc. agreed Tuesday to submit to regular audits of its privacy protocols to resolve Federal Trade Commission allegations that the ride-hailing platform failed to properly safeguard sensitive data and misrepresented its monitoring of employee access to consumers’ personal information.
Following news reports about employees improperly accessing customer data, Uber released a statement in November 2014 stating that the company had a “strict policy prohibiting” such practices and, the next month, developed an automated system for monitoring staff’s access to consumers’ personal information. But less than a year later, Uber stopped using that system, the FTC alleged Tuesday. The FTC also accused Uber of failing to adequately protect personal information stored with Amazon Web Services, a third-party cloud provider, allowing a hacker to access the names, driver’s license numbers and other sensitive data about more than 100,000 drivers in May 2014.
