As if a horror movie in the middle of the night was not enough to scare people and have nightmares, spooky and hair-raising faces – not part of the horror movie just watched at all – join in and follow us in the dark corridors of our home!
That is the frightening feeling that oozes out of some of the driver profiles of the ride-hailing service Uber app popping up on the mobile screens.
Uber in China is fighting against what are being called ‘ghost drivers’ who are bent on scamming Uber services hailers to earn a few extra bucks. ‘Ghost drivers’ are being referred to the scary unearthly faces of the alleged drivers who only pretend to respond to the would-be passengers. Reports say that the intention behind uploading pictures of distorted faces is to scare passengers into cancelling the trip, a pretext to charge cancellation fees for the trouble caused. The cancellation fees would be “between 8 and 15 yuan (about 1 to 2 dollars) for a ride that never happened”.
The eerie faces also exploit passengers’ wallets in another way – by running the meter even before the passenger might have accepted the vehicle, then cancelling shortly before the actual pick up and charging cancellation fees. The ‘ghost drivers’, whose life might last less than a minute, do not even respond to calls from passengers, confirming their non-existence, but very well charging customers as if actually existing.
Though Uber China’s public relations department has opened an incident reporting service, the loss of just a few yuan might discourage the victims of the scam from reporting about the incident. The incident reporting has a bifurcated aim of combating the scammers and refunding the scammed. Uber has stated about the ongoing scam that it has “zero-tolerance attitude to scamming behavior”.
However, the main floating question is how did the scammers manage to upload these creepy faces along with licensed plate numbers and other information normally seen on Uber mobile app screen?
The original Uber driver sign-in page provides a link for adding or updating the profile picture for drivers registered with the company. The website pretends to be strict about the profile photos being uploaded: “Please remember that this is the photo riders will see when you’re on your way to pick them up. The photo should be a clear picture of your face (no sunglasses, not a full body picture)”. However, monitoring of drivers’ profile was definitely absent when the distorted, morphed photos maneuvered easily to the final driver profile page on the mobile screen shown just before pick-up.
“We have taken immediate actions and banned these reported individual fraud accounts while continuing to investigate and crack down on any fraudulent behavior to protect rider and driver interests,” an Uber spokesperson wrote to Quartz . As a response to the perpetrated scam diminishing Uber’s reputation, the company has introduced facial-recognition technology to ensure hundred percent approximation to the photo uploaded in the company’s driver registration files. This measure is aimed at minimizing driver fraud to zero and ensuring rider safety to hundred.
Uber recently unrolled a new Real-Time ID check measure, in the US for now, to keep drivers and riders safe alike. The Real-Time ID check using “Microsoft machine learning” is a selfie system wherein the driver is asked to snap a selfie periodically, which is compared with the profile picture registered with Uber. Any mismatch can result in drivers being temporarily locked out of their account while the hiring company gets into immediate investigation of any potential fraud.
There is a dire need for this measure to spread across the world. The implementation of this additional verification step each time the driver logs in can protect identity theft, and can avoid any Uber China-like driver scam.
But imagine ghosts taking selfies and authenticating themselves! Especially when we want a ride in the middle of the night! Let’s hope they do not succeed with the selfie security measure.
Uber China is not new to driver scams. Uber drivers in China were given subsidies for each trip made. “The generous original subsidy, intended to attract drivers to use the Uber platform, amounted to up to 300 yuan (about US$50) for every 30 trips and 400 yuan for every 40”. Perhaps a reduction in the subsidy turned the drivers into scammers to increase the number of rides and not accepting longer trips. The method of scamming – almost the same: trying to earn a starting fee and then subsiding cash on fake and cancelled trips.
After all these scams, what the Chinese passengers really need is to take a ride with Uber safely, and not be taken for a ride by the ‘ghost drivers’!
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