Uber's hack probe

Massive shock...........Uber's back in the headline for the wrong reasons.....again!

It is said that Uber has failed to disclose a massive data breach. Which is shocking because of how their business is now looking after what happened in London. Investigations were being opened by regulators from three different places; Italy, The US and the UK. Now the US is a massive country whereas the UK and Italy are medium sized. However they all hold a lot of power and persuasion over other countries in the world, especially The US.

Now, this happened because Uber failed to notify user or regulators about the incident which happened last year in 2016, the breach included the theft of names, email addresses and phone numbers of approximately fifty million passengers and seven million drivers for that period of time. They finally admitted that on Tuesday 21st of November 2017. Yes, it is good to admit that something has gone wrong, but it shouldn't take more than a year to do so in my opinion this is a terrible thing and the fact they could take so long to say that they were breached shows they didn't actually care about the details that were stolen. What they should have done is told them right away as that's what I would have done, it also means that the people would know immediately that some information had been taken so they can prepare for the worst.

When they realised they were hacked they decided to sort it out themselves, which turned out to be a wrong move, they didn't notify anyone at all therefore people were unaware that they had information stolen. Then Uber had the audacity to pay the hackers £100,000 to destroy the information. Yes, what they did was try and sort out the problem themselves which shows initiative however in my opinion they must notify the people who had their information stolen and then the regulatory body as they can help sort out the problem faster and more efficiently than Uber can. Which is shown because Uber screwed up...big time.

More states in the US have now launched investigations which is a good things as it means they are trying to help the residents get to the bottom of the hack, in my opinion this is a good way to help out as it means that more people are wanting to see what the problem is as well as trying to find a way to solve the hack and help their residents secure their data either by changing backs and email addresses or finding a way to create more barriers for their information to be stolen.

Uber then decided, after they finally admitted to the hack, that they needed to find a way to turnaround so they hired a new chief legal officer, Tony West. Since they did this it looks like they are trying to make amends for what happened and it shows that they are sorry for what happened, however in my opinion it makes it seem as though they are doing this because they've been caught, if nobody found out about the hack the same chief legal officer would still be there so they are only changing because they got caught.

“Uber’s announcement about a concealed data breach last October raises huge concerns around its data protection policies and ethics,” said James Dipple-Johnstone, deputy commissioner at the UK Information Commissioner’s Office

Above is a direct quote, this quote shows exactly how I feel about Uber's handling of the hacking scandal. they could have done so much more. Think about it for a second, uber decided that it was in their best interests to keep this a secret, what a mistake that was, as it was unethical to keep this hacking away from the public eye as it meant they didn't know about it. And so they're details could have been used or in the worse case sold to other people and businesses.

Overall, I and many others think that, what Uber did was unethical and very, very stupid. Why? Because the information that was stolen could be used in various different ways, the worse part is, is that nobody knew about this happening except Uber. This meant that for a full year they were in the dark and that is terrible and very much disrespectful to a high extent.