Uber Will Stop Giving Drivers Your Exact Pickup and Drop-Off Locations
Uber announced that it will start obscuring riders' exact pickup and drop-off locations in its drivers' logs with a new pilot feature in the app launching soon.
Instead of pinpointing your locations, the app will display a more general location as the pickup/drop-off point.
Under the current version of the app, Uber drivers are given a record of the exact drop-off and pick-up addresses of their riders in their trip history. Even more invasive, riders' addresses are stored in a driver's trip history indefinitely-- even if a rider deletes their account and data from Uber. Therefore, drivers can look back at a passenger's address any time by scrolling through the ride history.
In the past, passengers -- particularly women -- have reported incidents of drivers using information from ride-hailing apps to stalk or harass them.
Uber's new pilot program will soon begin hiding that information in riders' trip histories, showing broad areas instead. "Location data is our most sensitive information, and we are doing everything we can do to protect privacy around it," an Uber spokesperson told Gizmodo. "The new design provides enough information for drivers to identify past trips for customer support issues or earning disputes without granting them ongoing access to rider addresses."
Uber has not said when the rollout of the new feature will be complete, but the Uber spokesperson told Gizmodo that it should be widely available in "coming months."
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