Moneybox

Looks Like Uber Got Hacked

Really?

Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

No one is safe, not even multibillion dollar ride-hailing companies. According to the latest Uber update, as many as 50,000 of its drivers may be affected in a security breach that occurred last May.

Uber says it discovered in September that one of its databases “could potentially have been accessed by a third party” (note the double hedging here). Upon realizing this, the company continues, it “immediately changed the access protocols for the database and began an in-depth investigation,” which showed that there had been one instance of unauthorized access. From that breach, the hacker would have gained access to only names and license numbers of drivers, Uber says.

While 50,000 people is a lot, it’s not nearly on the same scale as the estimated 80 million customers that were put at risk in the recent Anthem insurance breach, or the 70 million affected by the Great Target Hack of 2013. Uber also seems to be handling this well. The company is notifying drivers and offering one year of free “ProtectMyID” monitoring from credit report firm Experian. Uber has also filed a so-called “John Doe” lawsuit in an attempt to track down the alleged hacker.

In the meantime, the company seems to hope its blog post on the matter will disappear from Internet memory. The URL is impressively unsearchable.