National snapshot Uber spy claims not a worry for Aussies

GROWING criticsm of Uber sparked by claims the ridesharing app has spied on its passengers has not diminished Australia’s obsessive love affair with the digital disrupter.

New research, exclusively obtained by News Corp Australia, shows up to one in four Aussies now are regular Uber riders.

Details emerged this week of a confrontation between tech giants in 2015 in which Apple CEO Tim Cook reportedly told Uber chief Travis Ka- lanick he would kick Uber out of the App Store unless it stopped tracking the phones of former Uber users even after they had deleted the app.

This week Uber faced new claims of spying on people, with revelations that it was buying information about people’s use of rival ride- sharing companies from Unroll. me, a service which delivers people a summary of their inbox by scanning all of their emails.

Uber rejects the claim it was spying on customers, describing the technology Cook objected to as being an anti- fraud measure. Roy Morgan research reveals a dramatic growth in the number of Australians ditching cabs and turning to the disrupter app.

The research, that reveals Uber usage in Australia in the past six months, shows that in some cities one in four Aussies regularly hail an Uber.

The number of Uber trips taken across the country has rocketed up to 3.8 million trips a month, up from fewer than 1.5 million per month a year ago.

The number of Aussies using Uber has more than dou- bled in a year, from 1.16 million, or 6 per cent of the population, a year ago to 2.69 million, or 14 per cent, now.

In Perth, which is the only mainland city in which Uber rides have overtaken taxi rides, 24 per cent of residents have taken an Uber in the past three months compared with 22 per cent of people who have caught a cab.

However, nationally taxis are still more popular. In the past three months, 22 per cent of Aussie have caught a cab compared with 14 per cent who have taken an Uber ride.

But while privacy concerns have driven some people away from Uber, the Roy Morgan research shows that Aussies who use Uber are less likely to see privacy risks as a problem.

Futurist and founding chairman of Advanced Human Technologies Ross Dawson said Australians had embraced Uber with a willingness to overlook some transgressions.

“The reality is that Uber would not be the company that it is today without having actively flouted some rules and regulations and pushed the boundaries,” Mr Dawson said.