He was chatting with friends in a Lyft. Then someone sent her a message to what they said
Anvi Ahuja noticed a new message of text “strange” from a number he did not know immediately after returning to his apartment in the center of Toronto last month.
The text was a transcription of the conversation he had just had with his roommates during their Lyft trip at home from an eight -minute friend.
“I was like ‘Who is touching me?’,” Ahuja said. “The driver did not inform us that we could be recorded.”
In a few minutes he called the number from which the text came and he heard this automatic and automated message: “We cannot connect your call because the driver is not available right now”.
“It looked like a rather standard Lyft message, which raised many more questions,” he said.
Ahuja phoned Lyft that night looking for answers. In the initial called, he says that a representative told her that this was something that the horse sharing company was piloting. But then about a week after following Lyft, he received a message written by a member of the company’s security team that blamed the accident on the driver for registering it without his consent and said that “adequate actions” against the driver were undertaken.
A woman from Toronto is speaking, after a recent driving share experience that made her feel uncomfortable and unwanted. After the trip was over, he discovered that his private conversation had been recorded. A transcription of the conversation was sent to her by an unknown number.
“These apps for sharing races are large companies and people have many sensitive conversations within taxis and feel safe,” Ahuja said.
“Knowing that nothing – even beyond our app experience – in the real world is safer is really strange and uncomfortable for me.”
Lyft says the accident is not part of the US pilot program
The company confirms the accident, but offered different explanations.
After CBC Toronto contacted Lyft for this story last week, a representative of Lyft called Ahuja. He says that they told you that the company is conducting a pilot program in which the audio is recorded by some rides and therefore the transcription should be sent to the company to share the tour for reference if a security problem is reported.
In a CBC declaration, a Lyft spokesman recognized that the racing company sharing has an in-app audio recording pilot in selected US markets with “rigorous opt-in protocols”, but said that this accident is not related to that pilot program or any other function tested by Lyft.
“Safety is essential for Lyft and we take relationships like this very seriously and we will investigate and take measures for violations of our terms of service and privacy policy,” said the note.
“We can confirm that the communication was sent through a masked number and that the driver had no access to the personal phone number of the pilot.”
Raise Privacy Policy He says it works “with a third part to facilitate telephone calls and text messages between cyclists and drivers without sharing the actual phone number of both sides with the other”. And the company Registration device policy It prohibits the registration of another person “without their express preventive consent”.
The horse sharing company would not provide further details on the source of the transcription received from Ahuja, but it seems that the text may come from the driver through a number masked by the third -party supplier of Lyft.
“Completely unacceptable” accident
So, how is Ahuja experience Jive with Canadian privacy laws? A former Privacy Commissioner told CBC Toronto that he does not do it.
“It is completely unacceptable,” said Ann Cavoukian, who was commissioner for the Privacy of the Honethe from 1997 to 2014.
“You are paying for a taxi equivalent to bringing you somewhere, Lyft in this case. And, of course, assume that you will have conversations with people in the car without being registered and transcribed.”
In Canada, the law on the protection of personal information and electronic documents (Pipeda) establishes the basic rules for the way companies, including companies such as Lyft, can collect, use or share personal information.
Federal law requires companies to obtain informed consent before collecting, using and disseminating the personal information of its customers, according to the provisional director of privacy, technology and surveillance program at the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.
“Passengers should not only be informed that are recorded, but must also be informed for the specific purpose that are registered,” said Anaïs Bussières McNicell.
“They should certainly obtain the significant consent of the passengers, the informed consent and this includes to be specific on how the data will be collected, how they will be used, for how long it will be maintained, how it will be destroyed.”
This never happened to Ahuja, and is part of the reason why he still has concerns about the accident even if he was one -off with his driver.
“A sort of recording software was used in the car – which in itself is a violation of my privacy,” he said.
“Even if I am one of the very few people who have experienced this, I am still worried about what happens to our data and our privacy, which is a responsibility that Lyft has to its customers.”
