Hi John,
NEW: Uber will sell your sensitive personal data to—you guessed it—advertisers. But this isn’t just any ad scheme. Uber is cashing in on your realtime location.
Vice summed it up perfectly: “What could possibly go wrong”? As we’ve seen time and time again with willful disregard for consumer privacy rights—a lot. The Wall Street Journal first reported that Uber plans to roll out a targeted ad system to allow marketers to serve you ads based on your ride history and destination.[1,2] Given that Uber knows exactly where you’re going and where you’ve been, this rings a lot of alarm bells. Uber is exploiting potentially sensitive personal data to make more money off of you.
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We’re launching a petition to demand that Uber end its so-called “journey ads” program based on ride history and location data.[3] This is just another way for Uber to exploit the extensive data they have on you and sell it to the highest bidder. Uber disregards how its ad tech can harm people, like accidentally releasing ultra-sensitive ride history, payment info, and geo-location data in a hack. It’s especially terrifying in a post-Roe era, where we’ve already seen people’s online conversations used against them in abortion-related prosecutions. [4]
Will you help Fight launch a campaign to demand Uber stop its creepy personalized ad program? Your donation helps expand our work against the gross misuse of private data.
It’s exploitation by companies like Uber that remind us exactly why we’re in the trenches of this fight every single day. It’s why we spend time and resources to ask the FTC to safeguard data privacy, demand tech reviewers stop normalizing dangerous surveillance tech like Ring, and fight facial recognition. This is why we fight for your digital rights as basic human rights.[5] Enough is enough. You have a right to not constantly be subjected to data extraction by tech giants.
DONATE FOR DATA PRIVACYThank you for your support,
The Team at Fight ❤️
[1] Uber to Let Marketers Target Riders by Destination | WSJ
[2] Uber Will Start Serving You Targeted Ads Based On Where You Go | Vice
[3] Cops used Facebook messages to investigate an alleged illegal abortion | NPR
[4] Tell Uber Not to Sell Your Ride History to Advertisers | Fight for the Future
[5] Tell the FTC: We need meaningful safeguards against corporate data abuse | Fight for the Future
Fight for the Future works to protect your rights in the digital age.