Uber acquires electric bike share company that tracks people in real-time

MassPrivateI

Yesterday, it was announced that Uber acquired Social Bicycles Inc., or Jump Bikes an electric bike share company from New York.

What’s wrong with Uber acquiring an electric bike share company you ask?

Jump Bikes is much more than an electric bicycle company. 

Jump Bikes tracks customers calories burned and the miles they traveled and lets people share or view other bicyclists personal information, encouraging them to post their results on Twitter and Facebook.

“You may also share your own trip maps and statistics via certain third-party sites such as Facebook or Twitter or by email.”

Uber plans to put their electric bikes in smart cities everywhere.

“At Uber, we’re focused on championing smart technology for smart cities. Today I’m excited to announce we’ve entered into an agreement to acquire JUMP Bikes, an electric, dockless bike-sharing service we’ve already been testing in San Francisco Dara Khosrowshahi said.”  (Click here to find out about the CIA and smart cities.)

Should customers be worried about Uber collecting their personal information?

Two years ago, Reuters revealed that Uber’s app collected customers personal data with no way for them to turn it off. And in 2017, Uber was caught secretly spying on LYFT drivers.

Will Uber’s Jump Bikes be any different?

They know where you are in real-time

Unfortunately, the answer is no.

It appears that no matter what you rent nowadays, electric ride-share scooters or car rentals, corporations seem to care less and less about customers privacy.

According to Jump Bikes privacy page, Uber uses a Global Positioning System (GPS) to track customers in real-time.

“GPS is a network of satellites that allows us to determine the location(latitude and longitude) of our bicycles. We and our Operators may track or monitor bicycle locations.”

Uber will use Jump Bikes to collect lots of personal information.

“We may also collect information from other sources, which may include: business partners, such as integrated services providers or apps or websites that use our APIs or whose APIs we use, through which you create or access your Member account; marketing service providers; and publicly available sources.”

Jump Bikes shares customers’ personal information with many people.

“We may disclose your information to the applicable Operator and to contractors, advisors, consultants, prospective and current business and marketing partners, and service providers acting on our behalf or under our instructions.”

Customers should not be surprised when health insurance companies use this data to deny them insurance.

As you can see rental sharing programs don’t really expect you to read their privacy agreements and while they may appear to care about privacy, we know better.

https://massprivatei.blogspot.com/2018/04/uber-acquires-electric-bike-share.html