Uber Paid Off Hackers To Cover Up Data Leak Of 57 Million Users' Personal Information (I obviously will continue to use Uber)

Business Insider — On Tuesday, Bloomberg revealed that Uber paid hackers $100,000 to conceal a cyber attack that exposed the personal data of 57 million users of the app in October 2016. The hack exposed the names, emails, and phone numbers of 50 million riders, as well as the US driver’s license numbers of an additional 7 million drivers.

The hackers subsequently contacted Uber and demanded a $100,000 extortion fee to erase the data from their servers, a demand which the company agreed to, according to the report. The decision to acquiesce with the hacker’s extortion fee was reportedly led by former chief executive Travis Kalanick and chief security officer Joe Sullivan.

A couple things here.

Numbah one, Uber kinda sucks huh? These fuckers just can’t get out of their own way. In the last few years they’ve unethically tried to sabotage their competition, done oppo research on anti-Uber journalists, spied on users’ locations (including Beyonce, don’t mind that actually), put self-driving cars on the road which ran red lights day one, paid out $20M in settlements for false advertising earnings to drivers, sexually harassed (allegedly) their own employees, had their CEO caught yelling at a driver, a bunch more bad shit, and now they admit 57 million people’s personal info was hacked last year and they actively paid out hackers to cover it up. FIFTY SEVEN MILLION people!

Doesn’t stop there. Uber went to extraordinary lengths to keep this shit covered up (NY Times report):

Uber acquiesced to the demands, and then went further. The company tracked down the hackers and pushed them to sign nondisclosure agreements, according to the people familiar with the matter. To further conceal the damage, Uber executives also made it appear as if the payout had been part of a ‘bug bounty’ — a common practice among technology companies in which they pay hackers to attack their software to test for soft spots.

Numbah two, these hackers are the dumbest hackers alive. $100K? That’s it? $100K? Uber’s got a $68 BILLION evaluation and these hackers settled for 100K? Come on guys. Portnoy loses more on Iowa basketball on a Tuesday. 100K?

Take note, fellas. This is how you do it.

PS — I still haven’t deleted my Uber app. Use it every day, have no plans of changing. Couldn’t even imagine anything else.