Did black market “rental Uber account” cause chaos around sleeping child?

Maybe Uber didn’t call the driver because Uber didn’t know the driver

A Toronto Uber driver inadvertently pulled away with a sleeping child on the rear bench of his van. Uber Corporate would not give the frantic mom or the Toronto police the cell number of the driver.

Toronto police eventually located the girl without any help from Uber, which cited its corporate privacy policy as the reason they could not identify the driver.

This insane story is all over Toronto media this week, and everyone has the same question: how on Earth could Uber put its privacy policy ahead of the safety of a small child?

Well, maybe the reason Uber would not contact the driver, was because Uber COULD NOT contact the driver.

On April 14th, the Tech Transparency Project (TTP) published an extensive article highlighting the fact that Uber accounts for use by non-certified drivers are now for sale, rent or lease on numerous social media sites. Exactly who is renting the Uber credentials; technically how the credentials can be “rented” within Uber’s platform system; and how law enforcement and regulators will manage this new wrinkle in rideshare are all questions yet to be answered.

“Facebook is hosting dozens of black market groups where people can buy or rent Uber driver accounts, giving them a way to drive for these services under a false identity and putting passengers and customers at risk,” the TTP investigation found.

“TTP identified 80 Facebook groups with a combined membership of more than 800,000 users that trade in driver accounts for Uber, DoorDash, and other rideshare and delivery apps. Many of the groups made no secret of their activity, with obvious names like ‘Uber Delivery Drivers Account For Rent.’

“This black market allows people to acquire driver accounts for Uber and other services without going through the required screening process or even having a valid driver’s license. The activity endangers passenger and customer safety and may violate U.S. law. A recent case involving a similar alleged scheme resulted in wire fraud and identity theft charges against more than a dozen people,” TTP writes in the article published on its website.

Indeed, Taxi News only needed to do a few quick searches to confirm the Technology Transparency Project’s findings: there are lots of entities advertising Uber accounts for “rent.” In an emergency, how would Uber contact the “renter” of one of these accounts? Is this the reason Uber failed to help mom Julia Viscomi when she was almost hysterical with worry over safety and location of her daughter?

I had an extensive interview with Viscomi last night and found her to be smart, sincere and articulate. She acknowledges that she should have made sure the driver realized her youngest child was asleep in the back bench while the other kids were being unloaded from the Uber; she does not have any hard feelings for the driver.

However, she is absolutely livid that Uber failed to contact the driver immediately and that 68 Toronto police cars needed to be dispatched in an urgent dragnet search to locate her daughter.

“The customer service person told me it was against their privacy policy for them to contact the driver. I looked up the policies, and sure enough, it is a policy of theirs – they cannot call the driver, which is insane. So it’s not that I was the exception,” explains Viscomi, who says she has barely been able to sleep since the event occurred.

Viscomi’s mission now is to see Uber change the corporate policy which prevented them from providing the driver’s contact information to the parents or the police.

When I shared with Viscomi the recent Technology Transparency Project information on Uber accounts being rented on a black market, she was floored and horrified.

“Do the police know about this?” she gasped.

Well, if they didn’t know before this week, they must surely know now. How they will manage to protect the safety of the riding public in the face of endless technological hacks to existing systems will be a new challenge.

Yesterday, Viscomi updated her Facebook page to let followers know that Toronto Councillor Mike Colle has reached out to her with plans to bring this issue up at Council in the near future. Indeed, Councillor Paula Fletcher made note of the lack of identification or information around rideshare vehicles in December.

Passenger safety and consumer protection were the backbone of Toronto’s by-laws prior to 2016 but have been virtually forgotten with the arrival of rideshare. Perhaps Viscomi’s nightmare incident will provide the impetus needed to get Council to take safety seriously again, before the City is mourning a death.