Senator Al Franken asks Uber for more clarity on new location data sharing | TechCrunch

Glad someone brought this up. Uber’s new app chooses to use your location data “always”.

Uber’s description for the usage is that it wants to improve “pickups , drop offs, customer support and safety”. user data is only collected from the start of trip till 5 minutes after the trip ends and / or when the app is open.

There have been multiple times when I’ve been charged more than what the fare should have been because the driver didn’t end the trip until sometime after I got of the car. Theoretically, Uber could prevent these kind of scams with this user data.

But does it really need to? I don’t think there’s a valid reason to use user’s data. Uber’s inability to explain its users as to why it’s collecting the data, clearly, makes them fear the worst (that Uber wants it to be able to introduce surge pricing in more and more situations or worse still, feed some kind of a god mode within the company’s headquarters, allowing them to spy on users ). These are irrational hypotheses, but the lack of clarity in explanations, definitely makes people’s imaginations run wild.