Uber’s Document My Journey characteristic is increasing to much more cities throughout the USA. The characteristic offers each passengers and drivers the flexibility to simply report audio throughout a visit in an effort to spice up security for each events concerned.
What’s Document My Journey?
Document My Journey is a security characteristic from Uber that helps drivers and passengers doc what’s taking place throughout a visit if both social gathering turns into uneasy or feels threatened. Utilizing the Uber app, drivers and passengers can report audio to undergo the corporate in a security report.
The characteristic was first piloted in 2019 in numerous international locations in Latin America, earlier than it was introduced to pick cities within the U.S. on the tail finish of 2021. Uber claims that 70% of riders and drivers in Brazil’s Rio De Janeiro reported feeling safer whereas utilizing the characteristic. Whereas Uber can’t convey Document My Journey to the whole thing of the U.S. since recording legal guidelines fluctuate from state to state, the corporate expanded the characteristic to Cincinnati, Nashville, Phoenix, Salt Lake Metropolis, San Antonio and Tucson in November 2022.
On the identical time, Uber revealed it was engaged on a dashcam-like video recording characteristic as a part of a pilot program that included drivers in Cincinnati, Louisville, New York Metropolis, and Santos and João Pessoa in Brazil.
How do I entry Document My Journey?
Document my Journey will solely seem when you find yourself a passenger or driver in an energetic journey. For passengers, faucet the blue protect button within the backside proper nook of the map view throughout your journey to open the Security Toolkit, and choose Document Audio from the menu. Uber will instantly start recording audio of your journey along with your telephone. For drivers, the blue protect icon is situated within the backside left of the map view.
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Are there security considerations with Document My Journey?
Uber says that the audio you report will stay in your telephone and can keep encrypted till you file a report back to Uber’s Security Group, and add the audio as an attachment. Likewise, the corporate says that the passenger will get a notification when their driver begins recording audio, and vice versa, however the dashcam characteristic apparently sends no such notification. There may be additionally the continuing concern of a tech firm accumulating extra information from its customers to make use of indirectly afterward.
“Uber already has this treasure trove of extremely private information about folks,” stated Camille Fischer, a workers lawyer on the Digital Frontier Basis, in The New York Occasions. “Once you pair surveillance throughout these journeys, whether or not it’s over the motive force or over the passenger, you might be getting a extra fine-tuned snapshot of individuals’s day by day lives.”
Uber didn’t instantly return robotechcompany.com’s request for remark.
Regardless, Uber’s voyage into video and audio recording are born from reviews of violence occurring in rides, during which drivers and passengers are sometimes remoted from exterior assist. A driver in East Bay, California was brutally attacked by a passenger in early 2023, leading to a $20,000 hospital invoice. Uber can be the main focus of a lawsuit waged in opposition to the corporate over reviews of ladies being sexually assaulted by drivers as early as 2014.
