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Uber says it will no longer track you once the ride ends

The ride-hailing company says it's stopping its unpopular practice of tracking passengers for five minutes after their trip.


Uber puts an end to its feature that tracked passengers for five minutes after their ride. 


Uber is pulling the plug on a controversial in-app tracking feature it calls "post-trip collection."

The ride-hailing company typically tracks rides while they're in progress to collect data and theoretically use that data to create a better experience. But last year, it was revealed that it continued to track passengers for five extra minutes after their ride ended.

Uber caught flak from privacy advocates and customers over the feature, prompting some users to even say they'd stop using the app. Now, that five minutes of tracking is no longer.

"We're now committing to more transparency and choice around our location data collection practices," said Uber security spokeswoman Melanie Ensign. "While our efforts last fall around post-trip location were aimed at improving the user experience, our riders let us know we missed the mark."

The past few months have been difficult for Uber, it's been caught in a wave of scandals and controversy. Along with a #DeleteUber movement, workplace sexual harassment allegations, and several lawsuits, the company's board of directors forced its CEO and co-founder, Travis Kalanick, to resign. Uber's new chief executive will likely be Expedia CEO Dara Khosrowshahi.

Uber changed its in-app privacy settings and data privacy, or differential privacy, earlier this year. But it's now decided to take it one step further by stopping its post-trip data collection.

If passengers never want to be tracked, they can opt for that within the Uber app privacy settings. However, they'll have to manually enter their pickup and drop-off locations whenever they hail a ride.

