New Delhi, April 24, 2024.
In the gig economy where users and service providers – who are called partners by companies like Uber and Zomato and not employees – interact, one of the biggest privacy and safety risks is when they interact. And increasingly companies are looking to minimise this risk. Uber India now says that to ensure better privacy for its users – as well as for drivers – the company is now proactively deleting phone numbers if they are shared in the chat between the rider and the driver.
This was revealed to India Today Tech in an exclusive chat by Sooraj Nair, Head of Safety Operations for India and South Asia.
Uber already warns users with a message in the chat box that states, “Keep your account safe – never share personal or account information in this chat.” But now the company is going beyond the obvious. It is now identifying if phone numbers have been shared in chats and taking proactive steps to mask them by deleting them, apparently because users or drivers may not fully realise the privacy risk of exposing their private phone numbers.