Uber has responded to the alleged leak of data related to rape and sexual assault claims, providing some figures of their own in a lengthy statement. "Given that our business depends on accountability and transparency, we are now sharing that information publicly so that our riders and drivers have the facts and can judge for themselves," Uber said in a statement to BuzzFeed News, referencing their previous article on internal data allegedly leaked to them by a former employee.
The leaked data, which includes a series of screenshots from a former customer service representative, appeared to show an alarmingly high number of support tickets related to database searches of "rape" and "sexual assault." In fact, according to BuzzFeed’s original article, one screenshot displayed a query for "sexual assault" that warranted more than 6,000 customer support tickets. Another, for "rape," returned more than 5,800 such tickets.
"These results are highly misleading," Uber said in their statement, noting that their analysis showed five rape allegations and 170 "legitimate" sexual assault claims between December of 2012 and August of 2015. The explanation for the high volume of internal search results displayed in the original screenshots, says Uber, mostly comes down to a combination of names containing any variation of the letters found in the word "rape," typos, (i.e. riders typing out "rape" instead of "rate"), and "unsubstantiated media reports."
As for the article's insistence that Uber actively attempted to find out who exactly leaked the screenshots to BuzzFeed in the first place, Uber admits such a search happened but not necessarily in the sole pursuit of any alleged leaker. "The answer is yes," Uber said in its statement. "We are unsurprisingly concerned that sensitive, personal and confidential data has been shared with people outside Uber."
As previously reported, Uber may soon be paying out an estimated $28.5 million to 25 million different riders as part of a class action settlement. The proposal, as Mashable reported in February, is aimed at settling both Philliben v. Uber Technologies, Inc. and Mena v. Uber Technologies, Inc. Impacted parties in both suits argue that Uber's "Safe Ride Fee" is an act of false advertisement.
