Uber has had five claims of rape and "less than 170" cases of sexual assault reported to its customer-service database concerning Uber rides between December 2012 and August 2015, the company confirmed late on Friday. Uber was responding to an investigation by Buzzfeed into reported sexual assaults involving the ride-sharing service, where Buzzfeed stated that employees had shared data about reported rapes and sexual assaults from its customer-service databases numbering in the thousands. The report also said that Uber's customer support team received more than 1,000 reports of alleged sexual harassment or abuse over a two-year period. Uber also explained that the thousands of customer service messages containing the word “rape” can be explained because the word "rape" is often a typo for the word "rate," or if it's included in a name like "Draper" or is used as a metaphor, for example, "you raped my wallet."
Uber has had five claims of rape and "less than 170" cases of sexual assault reported to its customer-service database concerning Uber rides between December 2012 and August 2015, the company confirmed late on Friday. Uber was responding to an investigation by Buzzfeed into reported sexual assaults involving the ride-sharing service, where Buzzfeed stated that employees had shared data about reported rapes and sexual assaults from its customer-service databases numbering in the thousands. Uber stated that their own analysis of the results shows five tickets that allege an actual rape occurred in the three years from December 2012 to August 2015 and 170 tickets with a legitimate claim of sexual assault (one in every 3.3 million trips). Uber also explained that the thousands of customer service messages containing the word “rape” can be explained because the word "rape" is often a typo for the word "rate," or if it's included in a name like "Draper" or is used as a metaphor, for example, "you raped my wallet."