As we move into a new year, it may be worth thinking about how privacy should be prioritised in particular situations.

Here's one scenario that is worth examining.

An Uber passenger in Singapore, going by the Facebook name Saza Faradilla, happened to take a 10-minute Uber ride that turned out to be rather ghastly.

Her driver, she alleges:

- tried to guess her horoscope and made her guess his

- repeatedly asked her out

- after getting rejected by her, he got agitated and claimed he did Palmology, and gave her a "future" reading

- asked for her number when they arrived at her destination.

For a solo, young female rider, one would certainly not want to be in a similar situation, whether or not she is okay with such advances. After all, if her ride were any longer, who knows what could have happened, right?

You can read her full account on what happened here:

After discussing her plight with some friends, she says she reported it to Uber, whom after some back and forth, told her in the following lengthy message they were not going to tell her if they penalised the driver at all:

In case for you it was tl;dr, here's the key paragraph:

We understand that you want to be informed about the penalty imposed on the driver-partner. We take the privacy of our users very serious [sic] – driver-partners and riders alike – and our privacy policies restrict the sharing of specific information about users. Driver status is [sic] personal data of driver-partner. According to the policy, we are not allowed to share driver-partner’s information without otherwise notifying him and having obtained his consent to such sharing. As such, we are unable to share any additional information on this front.

In other words, we have no idea what action Uber has taken — or if they even took any action at all — against Mr Allegedly Very Keen To Ask Girls Out, because privacy.

Which also means it is entirely possible that this driver might still be plying our roads.

How ah like that?

Top photo from Uber Singapore's Facebook page.

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