WASHINGTON – U.S. Senators Claire McCaskill and Bill Nelson have sent letters to the CEOs of ride-sharing companies Uber and Lyft, raising concerns about the companies’ privacy policies and demanding answers on current privacy and data security practices.

“Some media reports have suggested that Uber lacks responsible data-security practices and potentially disregards the protections articulated in its privacy policy,” the Senators, both senior members of the Commerce Committee, wrote in their letter to Uber. “For example, the press has reported that the general manager of Uber’s New York operations tracked and accessed a reporter’s travel logs on multiple occasions, though the reporter never consented to being tracked or having her data accessed. According to another press report, an individual interviewing for a job at Uber reportedly had access to the company’s database of customer records, including actual travel records of Uber riders. Such allegations, if true, appear contrary to Uber’s claim that it has a ‘strict policy prohibiting all employees at every level from accessing a rider of driver’s data’ with exceptions for a ‘limited set of legitimate business purposes,’ and the allegations raise questions about Uber’s enforcement of its own policies.”

The Senators also expressed concern with media reports that Uber’s “God View” of customer’s geolocation and other data is easily accessible to staff across the company, as well as media reports that a Lyft spokeswoman had access to customers’ travel logs.

McCaskill, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, and Nelson, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Science and Space, requested Uber and Lyft provide companies of all public and internal polices pertaining to their practices on privacy policies, third party data sharing, consumer data retention and notification, data breach protections, and other policies.

The Commerce Committee has jurisdiction over the Federal Trade Commission, which since 2002 has brought more than 50 enforcement actions against companies that have put consumers’ data at risk or failed to honor the terms of their privacy policies.

The Senators’ letters to Uber and Lyft can be found HERE and HERE.