A Delhi resident managed to quickly cancel a cab that was booked all the way in Russia on his Uber app
Delhi resident Mir Rafae was at work on Tuesday when he realised, to his alarm, that a cab had been booked all the way in Russia on his Uber app.
He immediately cancelled the cab and flagged the alleged hack to Uber, which calls it a "one-off case."
Mr Rafae, an Assistant Producer with NDTV, says he hopes Uber will investigate what happened.
On Tuesday evening, Mr Rafae received a text message from a number that he assumed was from Uber. He was shocked to see a message which read that his Uber account information, namely his phone number and email address, had been updated. The message also led him to a
link to click on in case he had not made the changes.
"Before I could react, I saw a notification of a cab ride being requested somewhere in Russia," he says.
"I logged on to the Uber website. Immediately, I managed to cancel the ride and delete my stored credit cards on the app," he adds. Luckily, there was no financial breach.
"I first tweeted Uber India then sent a direct message on Twitter to block and reset my account. They called me up immediately to investigate and reset my account within minutes," he says.
Uber calls the incident a "one-off case"
Uber says it uses a system of "risk-based authentication" to detect and alert a user to suspicious logins and activity.
"Unlike a compromised email or social media account, access to an Uber account does not give someone enough information to steal a person's payment information or gain access to other accounts," an Uber spokesperson tells NDTV.
"We send notifications whenever your password, contact information, or credit card number are changed in the app. This is how the user in this case got to know about the attempt made to get into his account," the spokesperson says.Click for more
trending news