In the few years of Uber's rise to power as a ride-hailing powerhouse, the startup has certainly been at the center of controversies.
The company does collect a lot of data on its consumers as they purchase their services. However, it's uncertain how Uber uses this data, or if it uses the data in a helpful and legal manner.
Uber announced today in a blog post that it would partner with the city of Boston and allow city officials to access its data. The data would "provide new insights to help manage urban growth, relieve traffic congestion, expand public transportation, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions," the post read.
Uber stated that it was planning only to share anonymized trip data on how the U.S. Census understood the geographical representation of zip codes. This data would include time codes, trip lengths, distances traveled as well as support for other localized transportation safety efforts. Uber seems open to sharing more of this data with cities, but has not announced plans for expanding beyond Boston yet.
While this kind of data usage sounds fairly innocent, it's worth considering Uber's long history of misusing data. In 2014, one of Buzzfeed News' reporters was tracked by an Uber employee via Uber's "God Mode" without their consent. This same employee also sent the reporter records of her Uber use. Both of these acts were clear violations of Uber's privacy policy, which stated that user data is only available for "legitimate business purposes."
If cases like this can occur, then Uber likely needs to improve its ability to internally manage its use of data, lest someone from outside of the company has to intervene.
