Several years ago, it was discovered that Uber had a secret “God view” system that allowed them to basically track their customers. Safe to say that even if you had nothing to hide, you are still very much so entitled to your privacy, and we can’t blame users for feeling that their privacy could be at stake when using ride-hailing services.
However researchers over at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne have actually created a new system for ride-hailing services that will help encrypt the user’s travel data. This means that ultimately the only people that will know your location (besides yourself) is the driver and not the company. The only data that will be transmitted back to the service would be the distance and the cost of the ride.
Dubbed “ORide” which stands for Oblivious Ride, the idea is that this system will help protect users from future applications such as Uber’s God View. There is a downside to the system and that is according to team member Jean-Pierre Hubaux, the encryption will make your searches for rides a few milliseconds longer, which on paper doesn’t sound like it will have that big of an impact.
However whether or not ride-hailing services decide to adopt the technology remains to be seen, although by doing so we guess it could send a message to their customers that they do care about their privacy.