Recently I was in South East Asia when Grab announced it was buying Uber’s regional business. Immediately Uber shut down, leaving drivers and clients stranded. But the most interesting is that as part of the transaction, Uber transferred to Grab the personal data of its users: history, trips taken, ratings etc. The article ‘Grab acquiring Uber’s data trove is a major red flag. Here’s why‘ explains the issue and why most people don’t care – but should.
Although users had to manually reset an account with Grab (most people had accounts with the two services anyway), this transfer of data as part of the business transaction reminds us that our personal data belongs to the service we are using and that it is an essential source of worth of those services.
“Uber should be criticised for how it handled its data transfer. The company did not ask users for permission to transfer their data. Even by the low standards of tech companies, Uber didn’t even include a ‘click here to opt-out’ option.” Regulation about the privacy of data should definitely extend to the situation where the service we use is getting acquired.
