Uber Confirms Database Breach Exposed Information For 50,000 Drivers
Uber announced that it suffered a database breach at the hands of hackers last year. The company admitted that about 50,000 drivers may have been affected by the breach and announced that a lawsuit has already been filed by Uber against the as-yet unidentified hackers.
“A small percentage of current and former Uber driver partner names and driver’s license numbers were contained in the database,” Uber’s managing counsel of data privacy, Katherine Tassi said in a statement. “Immediately upon discovery we changed the access protocols for the database, removing the possibility of unauthorized access. We are notifying impacted drivers, but we have not received any reports of actual misuse of information as a result of this incident.”
Uber’s statement notes that the breach was a one-time incident that occurred on May 13, 2014 and appears to have only resulted in the driver’s license numbers and partner names being exposed. That’s a serious issue of course, but it’s less information that has been revealed in some of the larger security breaches companies have seen in recent years. Uber is encouraging its impacted drivers to take it up on its offer of a free year of Experian ProtectMyID Alert.
Protecting user data is proving to be extraordinarily difficult for high-profile companies, which are daily targets for hackers. Uber is joining a list of companies to suffer security breaches that includes Home Depot, Sony, Target, and most recently, computer maker Lenovo.
“A small percentage of current and former Uber driver partner names and driver’s license numbers were contained in the database,” Uber’s managing counsel of data privacy, Katherine Tassi said in a statement. “Immediately upon discovery we changed the access protocols for the database, removing the possibility of unauthorized access. We are notifying impacted drivers, but we have not received any reports of actual misuse of information as a result of this incident.”
Uber’s statement notes that the breach was a one-time incident that occurred on May 13, 2014 and appears to have only resulted in the driver’s license numbers and partner names being exposed. That’s a serious issue of course, but it’s less information that has been revealed in some of the larger security breaches companies have seen in recent years. Uber is encouraging its impacted drivers to take it up on its offer of a free year of Experian ProtectMyID Alert.
Protecting user data is proving to be extraordinarily difficult for high-profile companies, which are daily targets for hackers. Uber is joining a list of companies to suffer security breaches that includes Home Depot, Sony, Target, and most recently, computer maker Lenovo.
