Uber Faces More California Labor Claims

San Francisco, CA Following news of a California labor lawsuit filed against Uber for allegedly misclassifying its workers as independent contractors comes news of another lawsuit against the company alleging violations of California labor law. This new lawsuit, however, does not deal with employee pay or classification. Instead it alleges violations of California state labor laws requiring companies to properly protect employee information.

According to court documents, the lawsuit was filed on March 12, 2015 by Sasha Antman on behalf of himself and other similarly situated Uber drivers. The lawsuit alleges that Uber failed to properly secure and protect drivers’ personal information, including names, driver’s license numbers and other personal information, and further failed to warn drivers that their personal information had been stolen.

Antman alleges that starting in May 2014, someone accessed and downloaded Uber files containing drivers’ information. Uber reportedly did not warn drivers about the breach until February 27, 2015, despite allegedly knowing about the data breach “as early as September 17, 2014.” When it warned about the data breach, Uber noted that approximately 50,000 drivers across the US could have been affected.

The lawsuit alleges that the hacker used a security key that was publicly available on the Internet to access and steal the information. “In other words, Defendant not only permitted all of the compromised Private Information to be accessible via a single password, but allowed that password to be publicly accessible via the internet,” the lawsuit states. Furthermore, the plaintiff alleges that the private information was available unencrypted and easily accessible with a password.

Antman argues that Uber failed to take adequate measures to protect its data systems and failed to properly handle and store the password that protected drivers’ private information, resulting in it being compromised. The plaintiff also alleges that on June 2, 2014, an unauthorized person used his private information to apply for a credit card with Capital One, which has had an effect on his credit report.

“The ramifications of the Defendant’s failure to keep Class members’ data secure are severe,” the lawsuit argues. It also accuses Uber of having a lackadaisical, cavalier, reckless or negligent approach to securing driver information.

In addition to the lawsuit regarding protection of driver information, Uber also faces a lawsuit alleging it misclassified drivers as independent contractors when they were in fact employees. A judge has so far refused Uber’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit.

The Uber data breach lawsuit is Antman v. Uber Technologies Inc., case number 15-1175, in the US District Court for the Northern District of California.