Montana Reaches Settlement With UBER Over Driver Information Hack
The State of Montana will be receiving some money from the ride sharing company UBER Technologies after a recent settlement agreement. Montana Attorney General Tim Fox explains why the state and the company were in negotiations to begin with.
“UBER learned over a year ago, back in November of 2016, that hackers had gained access to the personal information of UBER drivers throughout the nation,” Fox said. “They did not report that to the state of Montana Office of Consumer Protection, as they are required to under Montana law, nor did they report it to any other jurisdiction.”
Fox says no one from Montana has yet reported identity theft issues related to the UBER hack and that UBER did track down the breach. However, the lack of reporting to state authorities was costly.
“We determined that a penalty of $148 million will be paid to the states,” Fox said. “Of that amount, $575,344 will be paid to the state of Montana as fines and penalties for the failure to report the data breach so that we could get the word out to the UBER drivers in Montana that they needed to take steps to protect their identity.”
Fox says there were about 84 Montana drivers for UBER at the time the hacking occurred.