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Communications Privacy Transportation

Taxi Apps Accused of Facilitating Sexual Harassment In Brazil 49

New submitter André Costa writes The companies responsible for taxi apps Easy Taxi and 99Taxis are being accused of making it too easy for taxi drivers to harass female customers (some news reports — in Portuguese — can be found here, here and here). These apps currently disclose informations such as the client's name, cell phone and address to the driver. One customer that started being harassed through offensive text messages after a ride started an online petition demanding that the companies take effective measures to protect female customers. The petition already collected more than 27,000 signatures, and both Easy Taxi and 99Taxis already announced that they will implement features that will protect clients' privacy. At first, users will be allowed to choose if they want their phone numbers to be disclosed. Within a couple of months, both companies said they will provide VOIP calls, which will eliminate the need to exchange phone numbers.
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Taxi Apps Accused of Facilitating Sexual Harassment In Brazil

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  • by burtosis ( 1124179 ) on Friday March 20, 2015 @10:05PM (#49306791)
    They have an uber problem on their hands. She should have a right to be lyft alone.
  • I'm fucking tired of this shit. Dudes deal with seedy bullshit all the time but the ladies want to be in little isolated soap bubbles.

    Just enough. Another idea might be requiring that women passengers use female taxi drivers. Will that mean paying significantly more for a taxi? I can't control the market value. Maybe it will be an empowering experience and the female drivers will get a good financial opportunity. Who knows.

    But really, this whole ongoing whine has become tiresome. If you want to use a normal

    • Taxi apps are a method of communications. ALL methods of communication can be used for bad things as easy as they can be used for good things. Blaming a "taxi" application is idiotic, because the same claim could be made of Facebook, Twitter, email, cell phones, or even a goddamn piece of paper and pen if that is the only method of communication handy.

      People collude and plot. This is not some brand new revelation, it goes back thousands of years in historical writing. Read Homer, Plato, Aristotle, all o

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Karmashock ( 2415832 )

        Exactly. I'm just tired of bullshit. Once you've taken the red pill you see the corruption and patterns of behavior everywhere.

        It isn't even always a conspiracy. It moves like a fad or a meme... it is the wave that goes around a stadium. A mindless and generally meaningless reaction that forms a pattern of behavior.

        This whole "uber causes rape" meme has been flowing around the world. And YES I know this article is not about Uber... but it is a result of that meme.

        The point of the apps is to bypass the dispa

    • by burtosis ( 1124179 ) on Friday March 20, 2015 @10:57PM (#49306989)
      I know no one reads the article, or often even the summary but these are regular 'yellow' taxis. The only difference is the cabbies got more than the usual amount of client information.
      • I was aware... but it is all linked to the general backlash against changes to the taxi system which is linked to Uber etc.

        This isn't happening in a vacuum. Should a taxi driver see your phone number? The taxi dispatch operator has your phone number.

        How is it better for that to happen? The dispatch operator also knows where you were picked up and where you were dropped off.

        No one minds the dispatch operator having that information but the taxi driver? No... that's a violation of my privacy. Give me a fuckin

      • by alzoron ( 210577 )

        According to the summary the problem is already being solved. I'm not quite sure what the point of this article is.

      • I confess to not reading TFA, though I did read TFS. I fail to see how the cabbie can get LESS information than specified in TFS - he needs to know your name in order to identify his passenger, cellphone number is displayed whenever someone calls me (and I'm not even a cabdriver), and home address is (more likely than not) where you're being picked up OR where you're being dropped off....
    • An application leaking your name, home address and phone number -- without making it obvious to you that it does so -- would've caused a shitstorm on /. a few years ago, and rightfully so.

      Dudes deal with seedy bullshit all the time

      Exactly, and that's why these ladies did everyone a favor by protesting so it got fixed. Your red-pill addled mind got so hung up on the word "female" that you missed the rest of the sentence: "making it too easy for taxi drivers to harass [...] customers". Not only have there been leaks, there have been actual cases of cu

      • The taxi company always knows these things.

        And it only knows your name because you TELL it your name.

        If it asks my name and I say "bruce wayne" then the taxi company thinks my name is bruce wayne. Same thing with everything else.

        It isn't a big deal because the taxi companies have been getting this information since ALWAYS. The only difference is that they're trying to remove the dispatchers which means the driver gets it instead of the dispatcher. Why is that problem?

        As to taxi drivers harassing customers..

  • Uber is responsible to global warming and the heartbreak of psoriasis in 3...2...1.

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