Uber hides 2016 data breach; faces inquiry from US regulators

San Francisco: After ride-hailing platform Uber disclosed that two hackers "inappropriately accessed" the names, email addresses and phone numbers of 57 million customers, regulators of at least five states in the US said they will question the company for staying silent after the hack.

"At least five states including Illinois, Massachusetts, Missouri, New York and Connecticut stated that they would investigate the matter, after Uber revealed that the intrusion affected 57 million customers, compromising names, addresses and driver's license numbers in some cases," stated reports.

"We've been in touch with several state attorney general offices and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to discuss this issue, and we stand ready to cooperate with them going forward," Uber spokesperson said.

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This report comes at a time when the ride-hailing company is already battling a slew of other civil and criminal probes.

In a blog post on Wednesday, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi revealed that the company in late 2016 became aware that two individuals outside the company had inappropriately accessed user data stored on a third-party Cloud-based service that it uses.

The company suppressed information about the breach and paid the hackers a hefty $100,000 ransom to delete the data they had illegally obtained.

--IANS