Ola Cabs has landed itself in a fresh controversy over privacy after Chennai resident Swapnil Midha claimed she started getting SMSes from the company containing personal details of over a 100 customers. The information included names, numbers and addresses of people booking the service in Bangalore.
The problem arose three weeks ago when Midha booked a cab with the brand. Following this, she began receiving a constant barrage of communications from the company. They consisted of garbled alpha-numeric texts from a source called ‘VM-OLACAB’. She assumed it was a technical issue on their side and attempted to clear up the matter.
Midha first contacted Ola through their customer care number and eventually through their social media accounts but got no explanation for the problem. She claims Ola did not take any action against her complaint even after numerous attempts from her side. She has apparently gotten almost 300 to 400 messages in the time period since the issue started.
The 25-year old writer finally took to detailing her experience in a Facebook post and even got in touch with some of the people she received information about. In her statement, Midha asserted that Ola was completely unresponsive to her concerns and did not seem to care about the privacy of their customers.
In a recent update, she said Ola has contacted her on Twitter and sent her an email on 30 August to clarify that they had solved the problem. This is not the first time the taxi-hailing app has run into controversy. They are currently embroiled in a dispute with the Delhi High Court and may have been hacked back in June.
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While Ola Cabs claims there was no theft of user data in the attack, it still raises the question of just how secure their system is if two privacy-related controversies occur within 2 months of each other.