New Uber Phishing Scam Hack and Steal Uber Drivers Earnings
Over the past month, I’ve heard of a few new Uber phishing scam that are hacking Uber driver accounts. I wrote about a Lyft phishing scam a few months back that were stealing Lyft drivers pay, mainly through the Express Pay program. Lyft rolled out the Express Pay program nationwide, so Lyft drivers were a much bigger target. In addition, all you needed was a phone number and a 4 digit code to get into a Lyft driver’s account, so it was much easier to hack. There is Instant Pay on Uber, but that has only been released in select markets, so reports about phishing scams on Uber drivers have been few and far between. If you are eligible for Instant Pay, you will get a notification in your email.
In short, don’t give out any personal information over the phone. They may have additional information about you to try to pretend to be from Uber, including your name, address, or the make of your car. However, never give out your personal information, including your login email and password and always triple check any requests for any kind of information.
Driver Accounts of Uber Phishing Scam:
Here are two drivers account of the scam:
The person calls on an Uber line ( one that has been used by a customer when they contact you) and they identified themselves as Uber support. Then they act as if they have all your information and ask you to verify it cause you are about to get a bonus for the high amount of customer compliments and your high ratings. Once you give the information they place you on “hold” and process your “bonus” and bam, your account is drained of what ever is in it. and just as you realize the truth the person hangs up.
Here is the second:
What this guy did to sound believable was order a ride and then call me from the Uber cloaked phone number. He said “We can tell you’re on a trip so we’ll give you $50 to compensate you for the trip for taking the survey for us.” He asked me to pull over somewhere safe so I could answer the questions. Then the trip canceled. So I’m thinking this dude is plugged in to the Uber GPS system and can track me moving. Anyway he asked for my phone number and I gave it to him and he sends me the text you see in the picture.
The Uber Phishing Scam
The Uber Phishing Scam starts with a phone call or a text message. The above two examples started as a phone call but it could come in the form of a test message asking for any piece of information. I have even seen a message asking you to update your bank account in Uber vault. They usually get your phone number as a previous passenger from right now to a few hours ago. They may be able to get your name and phone number from a list of TNC drivers in your city or state. They can probably find your address online somehow (public records, Facebook) and other personal details.
They will pretend to you know your account details (name, email address, car type, etc) and then ask for further information, like your password. They want to get access to your Uber driver account so they can change your Instant Pay details or your Uber Vault credentials so they can steal your earnings.
How to Avoid Uber Phishing Scam
Like I said earlier, never give out your password or any other piece of information over the phone, email, or text. If you need to give any kind of information, contact Uber directly from the app and ask about what kind of information Uber needs. Typically, they will reply with further details via inside the Uber driver app or via email only after you initiate the contact from the app. If you want to make sure to keep the information private, only reply via the Uber driver app. When they send you a message on the Uber app, you will get a small notification on the bottom on the driver screen and you can reply directly from there.
You can also visit a local Uber office if there is one in your city. Only about half of the US markets have a local office and it maybe far away from where you are. It may be worth it just to stop in and ask a few questions and report any mysterious emails, phone calls, or text message so they are aware of scams in their area. This is how Lyft found out about the scam the week it started happening and sent out an email by the end of the week. It was a bit too late for some drivers but I’m sure it helped hundreds from the Lyft phishing scam.
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