“Cars will become our next living rooms, we spend 8 hours a week in a car; it’s a huge advertising opportunity” The General Manager of Uber advertising.

Uber is reportedly looking to pilot a new program in the US and India which aims to target ads to consumers based on to destinations they travel to using the app.

Advertising in this way is not new, we all know how often we see ‘ads’ on social media, and other apps, and companies are using technological advances to show us products they think might be of interest through cookie placement and other tracking methods, online and in person (for example shops monitoring the use of loyalty cards to send the consumer vouchers based on recent purchases).

Uber’s new program will include the use of tablets in cars (which will show content based on the journey). Ads would also be sent to users’ phones during the ride (“journey ads”) allowing advertisers to take advantage of a user’s geolocation to understand their interests and personalise adverts to them.

Understanding Geolocation data

Geolocation data is personal data, and by understanding a user’s journey habits, Uber could potentially map out a user’s life. This is a concern in terms of privacy and data protection.

A representative for Uber says that “users can opt-out of ad targeting at any time” and the data shared with advertisers is “aggregated data, not users’ data”. Concerns are growing as even though they may not be sharing individual data with advertisers, it is still being collected. Uber has one of the richest data sets on its users, including addresses, places they visit and credit card details; if this information was leaked or compromised in any way, it could leave users extremely vulnerable.

Users may already be weary about the data used and stored by Uber after Uber was hacked last month by a teenage hacker, who reportedly found vulnerabilities in their Multifactor authentication. While Uber is still ascertaining the full extent of the data that was accessed, they have confirmed that although internal information was taken, they have suggested that this did not include customers’ sensitive information.

The introduction of a new way of advertising such as this reminds us of the importance of getting it right from a data protection perspective.

Advertising and marketing can be one of the trickier areas of data protection to get right, and there is a lot of misconception about what businesses can and cannot do.

For more information, or to discuss the issues facing your business, please contact me directly or join our Data Protection Hub by going to https://bit.ly/3PaArKK.