cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/28209968
Anvi Ahuja received a text message transcript of her conversation with her roommates during their Lyft ride home on March 11.
The company confirms the incident took place, but has offered varying explanations.
After CBC Toronto contacted Lyft about this story last week, a Lyft representative called Ahuja. She says they told her the company is running a pilot program where audio is recorded from some rides and then the transcript is supposed to be sent to the ride-sharing company for reference if a security issue is reported.
In a statement to CBC, a Lyft spokesperson acknowledged that the ride-sharing company has an in-app audio recording pilot in select U.S. markets with “strict opt-in protocols” but said this incident is not related to that pilot program or any other feature being tested by Lyft.
This is a lesson to go through your app permissions to see what has access to your mic or camera and turn off those permissions which you don’t want it to have.
It wasn’t her phone that did it:
The lesson is to avoid these services if possible or communicate sensitive info silently/by text when you’re not in a trusted vehicle.
Ahh so it was the Lyft operators phone recording.
Or it was included (correctly or incorrectly) as part of Lyft’s test program where they record audio, and they’re lying.
If drivers opt-in to it, they should make it SOP to inform the rider at the beginning of the ride that they are being recorded.
That seems to be SOP for Uber. They flat out say that you may be recorded on rides, presumably for safety reasons.