One woman in Philadelphia said that her bank flagged and blocked a charge from Uber for $28,639, which the car-sharing service says was caused by a glitch in its computers.
According to Uber, this issue affected “a handful” of users and was only temporary. Its engineers are currently working to ensure a similar issue doesn’t occur again, as reported by Philly.
Basically what happened was that the authorization hold on an account that Uber utilizes when a person orders a ride became much higher due to the glitch.
Still, it seems that the unnamed Philadelphia woman first received an e-mail from the car-sharing service stating that her account had been hacked.
“Your sign-in information seemed to have been compromised/phished from another website and then tested on our platform,” said a message from Uber’s customer service. “This kind of fraud is highly sophisticated.”
Six days later, the woman received another message stating that her information was safe and that the “charge that appeared on your credit card statement was an unusually large authorization hold. This was never processed as a payment, and our engineering team has been made aware of this error.”
Users should be relieved to hear that drivers who use the Uber app do not have access to passengers’ payment information, according to the company, though at the same time, apps like Uber or Netflix are generally less protected than banks and have become popular targets for hackers. “First stop is to go someplace that has huge databases brimming with information,” said Adam Levin, a cyber security expert.
Last year alone, more than $1 billion was taken through internet crime in the United States according to the FBI, with 19,632 reported incidents being personal data breaches. One FBI special agent recommended that people use different passwords for different accounts and use a phrase rather than a word.
