Ride-hailing company Uber Technologies Inc. will pay $148m (£113m) to Washington state to settle a lawsuit over a 2016 data breach that exposed the personal information of 57 million customers and drivers.
The company reached the settlement deal with all 50 states and the District of Columbia and is the biggest data-breach agreement in the history.
Instead of reporting the matter, Uber paid a hefty sum of $100,000 to hackers who were behind the intrusion to delete the data and ensure that it wouldn’t be misused.
However, in November 2017, the company admitted that data breach happened, and they should have reported the matter instead of sweeping it under the carpet.
“The commitments we’re making in this agreement are in line with our focus on both physical and digital safety for our customers, as exemplified by our recent announcement of a host of safety and security improvements and our recent hiring of experts like Ruby Zefo as Chief Privacy Officer and Matt Olsen as Chief Trust & Security Officer,” said Tony West, Uber’s chief legal officer.
“It embodies the principles by which we are running our business today: transparency, integrity, and accountability,” West said.
“An important component of living up to those principles means taking responsibility for past mistakes, learning from them, and moving forward,” West further added.
