This article was published on January 25, 2016

Uber exposed its drivers’ social security and tax info, its third data flub in less than a year


Uber exposed its drivers’ social security and tax info, its third data flub in less than a year

Uber drivers who logged on to the company’s Partners portal to download their 1099’s are in for a surprise: the information might not belong to them.

Drivers all over the internet are posting that they’ve received someone else’s tax information and that these forms include sensitive identifying data, such as their social security number, earnings and home address.

This isn’t the first time, either.

Back in October, Uber exposed the licenses and tax documents of drivers through its Partner app. This breach included over 179 pages of identifying information on its drivers from all over the US.

Or, there’s that time Uber stored the encryption key to its driver database on a public GitHub page, exposing the IP address of everyone that’s ever visited the Uber webpage as well as personal data on 50,000 drivers.

Update: We spoke with Uber representatives about the problem and they informed us that it was caused by a bug on the development side of the Partner platform. Uber has since removed the offending tab that allows drivers to access the tax data.

The bug is also reportedly only exposed the data of one driver. According to Uber representatives, any contractor that received the wrong 1099 today saw the information of the same person, a female driver from Florida.

Uber Screwup Exposed Drivers’ Social Security Numbers and Tax Info, According to Drivers [Gizmodo]

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