Senator Al Franken Quizzes Lyft On Its Privacy Policy

Uber's business troubles over the past few weeks have spawned an increased scrutiny toward ridesharing services in general. The company recently posted its privacy policy, which spurred Senator Al Franken to fire a letter off to Uber expressing concerns and questioning aspects of it. During all this, Lyft quietly updated its own privacy policy, something the WSJ reported on late last month. With that change, Lyft implemented "new technical restrictions", and now Senator Franken has some questions about that, too.

Earlier today, Senator Franken sent a letter to Lyft CEO Logan Green. In it, he cited the recent "increased public awareness and concern" about ridesharing services and how they handle user data. He goes on to bring up Lyft's recent revised privacy policy, namely the statement that it has imposed those new technical restrictions.

These restrictions are not cited in the privacy policy on the company's website, and so the letter seeks additional details — particularly about "which categories of employees" can still access user data and in which situations such access is considered acceptable. Says Sen. Franken:

I am particularly concerned about this in light of reports of past conduct suggesting inadequate regard among Lyft executives for customers' privacy. At least one journalist has reported that her trip log was accessed on multiple occasions by Lyft executives without requesting her permission and without any apparent legitimate business purpose.

In the letter, Sen. Franken has presented ten questions about the privacy policies to which he has requested a response by December 31.

VIA: TechCrunch