UBER was fined by the Romanian authorities with a substantial amount due to a security incident that the company did not report, but which would have affected 30.000 users of the platform in our country. UBER recently received a fine of 200.000 LEI for a security incident in November 2016, the company avoiding notifying the authorities about it, although the data of 30.000 users was allegedly exposed in the security breach.
UBER contested the fine imposed by the ANSPDCP in May, and claims that that security incident was also confirmed by the president of the group in 2017, when the Romanian authorities were also notified. UBER was obliged to notify the authorities since 2016, but claims that it cooperated with the authorities in the investigation, but the fine is also based on the fact that the notification was made much later than it should have been.
UBER: BIG FINE in Romania, Here's the Reason
In November 2016, UBER had 200.000 users registered in the platform as drivers and customers, so that amount of 30.000 affected accounts represented about 15% of the total base of accounts that the company had registered. Those from UBER claim that important data such as card information, geolocation, etc. were not retrieved, and the company only notified the people whose accounts were affected by that security incident in 2018.
"We take the security of our users' data very seriously. According to external experts, there is no indication that sensitive data such as bank card details were accessed and we have not observed any attempted fraud or misuse of accounts following the incident. While we disagree with this decision, which we have appealed, we notified our users earlier this month.”
UBER was also investigated in the USA for hiding at least one security breach in its servers, so we should not be surprised that in Romania the company behaves exactly the same, especially since it has so many problems in the country. Considering that UBER contested the fine, it is hard to say if it will ever pay it, especially since processes of this kind can stretch over long periods of time, so it remains to be seen what will happen in the end.