Uber Drivers Knowingly Accepting Fraudulent Journeys For Share Of Cash, Says Security Expert.

Turning virtual cash into real money without being caught is a big problem for successful cyber-criminals.

They often have to get creative when "cashing out" or laundering the money they have stolen, according to a security expert.

Ziv Mador, head of security research at Trustwave SpiderLabs said that credit card thieves, for example, have limited time to profit, because at some point the victim will put a stop on their card.

Tens of thousands of stolen card numbers are traded daily on the Dark Web's underground market that Mr Zador and his colleagues have monitored, collating details taken from compromised websites or databases.

"They can try to sell the card, which is not a big money earner because they only get a few dollars for each one," he said.

Instead, he added, they are more likely to use them to buy more valuable assets like iPhones or Macbooks, which are popular because they tend to hold their value when resold, or turn into cash using fraudulent journeys with crooked Uber drivers.

"They do not buy 100 or so iPhones at once," he said. "They use a lot of different cards at different times."

Mr Mador said the crooks use randomisation tools to thwart anti-fraud systems that would spot if all the purchases, even those made with different cards, are being done on the same computer.

Another "cashing out" technique uses gift cards from big retailers outlets . 

This technique involves buying the gift card with the stolen credit card and then offering it for sale at a big discount.

Then there are the more creative scams that seek to use Uber and other ride-hailing firms to launder cash.

Mr Mador, and others, have seen adverts seeking Uber drivers who can take part in the scam.

"They are looking for Uber drivers to take the fraudulent payments, from people who register with the Uber app using stolen credit card details and do fake rides," said Mr Mador.

The driver's account is used to launder the cash generated when stolen credit cards are used to pay for the fictitious journeys. Drivers then get a cut of the money as a payment.

It's worrying that the company (Uber) doesn't pick up on what's happening and when card holders complain, Uber support help dissipates, telling victims their Terms and Conditions relinquish Uber from any responsibility over the fraud. They advise victims to take it up with the drivers.

It's this Uber market that forms the backbone of the cyber-crime world, said Dr Mike McGuire, a criminologist from the University of Surrey, who has studied this shadowy community.

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TAXI DRIVER LEFT SHAKEN AFTER BEING CHASED WITH A KNIFE

A Jersey taxi driver has been left shaken, unable to sleep and says he can no longer work late night shifts after being threatened with a knife on Friday.

The 58-year-old taxi driver, who wants to remain anonymous, told the ITV News he was chased with a knife in Gorey Village by a passenger who refused to pay his taxi fare.

He said: “I lost a whole night’s earnings, but I could have lost my life

"Taxi drivers are on the front line just as much as police."

He added that this is the worst incident he has witnessed in his 35-year career.

The incident happened at just before midnight on Friday.

A 21-year-old was arrested for grave and criminal assault and has since been release on bail.

The police investigation continues

Source : ITV News 

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China's Didi Suspends Hitch Ride-Sharing App After Passenger Raped And Killed By Driver

    

    

China’s largest ride-hailing firm Didi Chuxing is suspending its Hitch services nationwide, the company said in a statement on Sunday, a day after police said a ride-sharing passenger in the eastern Chinese city of Wenzhou was raped and killed by a driver.

Didi Chuxing said it was sorry that the carpool service would be suspended from Aug. 27 due to “disappointing mistakes” while the company reevaluates the product’s business model.

The suspected murder of a 20-year-old woman, who Wenzhou police identified only with the surname Zhao, is the latest in a series of violent crimes that have fueled safety concerns about the service.

Zhao got into a Hitch carpool vehicle at 1 p.m. (0500 GMT) on Friday, and sent a message to a friend at around 2 p.m. seeking help before losing contact, according to a local police statement.

A 27-year-old driver named Zhong was detained at about 4 a.m. on Saturday and confessed to raping and killing the passenger, the local police statement said, adding that the victim’s body had been recovered and an investigation was continuing.

Did said on Sunday that the suspect had no prior criminal record, had provided authentic documentation and passed a facial recognition test before starting work.

But the company said on Saturday there was a prior complaint made against the driver on Thursday by a passenger who alleged the driver took them to a remote place and then followed the passenger after she got out of the car.

“The incident shows the many deficiencies with our customer service processes, especially the failure to act swiftly on the previous passenger’s complaint and the cumbersome and rigid process of information sharing with the police,” the company said in the statement on Sunday.

The Hitch carpool service has run over 1 billion trips in the past three years, the company said. Didi is the biggest ride-sharing firm globally by number of trips.

STATE MEDIA CRITICISM

China’s state-backed media criticized Didi’s safety record on Sunday, while celebrities took to social media and pledged to delete the application.

“You’ve had so many incidents,” an unnamed family member of Zhao was quoted as saying in the Qianjiang Evening news, an official Zhejiang province publication.

“What are you going to do about your safety and service problems?”

Wang Chuanjun, a famous Chinese actor, on Sunday shared a screenshot of his phone as he prepared to delete the application. His post was shared over 58 thousand times on China’s Twitter-like Weibo and the hashtag “Wang Chuanjun uninstalls Didi” had been viewed nearly 9 million times by the evening.

China’s official Xinhua News agency criticized Didi for not doing more to prevent such incidents and said the company should face legal punishment if it failed to put customer’s safety first.

Didi has increased its safety measures for Hitch after the murder of a flight attendant during a Hitch ride in May sparked outrage. These included limiting Hitch drivers to only picking up passengers of the same sex during early morning and late evening hours.

Source : Reuters 

TAXI LEAKS EXTRA BIT : 

In the last month Taxi leaks reached over 421,000 people on FaceBook alone, and was read over 180,000 times by Twitter subscribers. 

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Uber’s New CFO Suggests Next Years IPO Won’t Happen

Incoming Uber CFO Nelson Chai has suggested the company might not go public in 2019.

The $69 billion transportation firm has been aiming for a 2019 IPO for a while - Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi even reiterated that plan earlier this year.

But Chai said that "I can't say I'm on board yet with going public next year," suggesting there may be further delays.

Uber's incoming chief financial officer CFO Nelson Chai has suggested the transportation firm may not go public in 2019 after all.

On Tuesday, Uber announced that it had appointed Chai, a Wall Street veteran, to the long-vacant post of CFO as it gears up for a long-awaited IPO in 2019, a stated goal of the company. But speaking to Axios, the new executive implied that the timing of the IPO wasn't a done deal just yet.

"The company has made comments about it, but I can't say I'm on board yet with going public next year," he said. "I've been impressed with the information I've seen, but I don't have enough insight until I really get in there to make sure we have the right processes and controls to be a public company."

Reached for comment, Uber spokesperson Matt Kallman downplayed Chai's remarks and said Uber is still "on track" to go public in 2019.

"As you might expect (and hope), Nelson was taking a conservative approach in his first interviews, as he hasn't started yet (his first day is Sep 10)," he told Business Insider in an email. "We're on track for an IPO next year."

Uber has been working hard to resuscitate its public image in recent months, after a chain of bruising scandals - from a culture of sexism to allegations of trade secret theft - that culminated in an executive exodus and the ousting of founder and then-CEO Travis Kalanick.

Kalanick's replacement as CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, is attempting to right the ship, and said the company is aiming to go public in 2019 as recently as May of this year.

"I'm incredibly excited to bring on someone as experienced and thoughtful as Nelson,"Khosrowshahi said in a statement when Chai's hire was announced. "He will be a great partner for me and the entire management team as we move towards becoming a public company."

With a $69 billion valuation in its last venture capital investment round, Uber is the most valuable privately owned technology company in the word today, and investors have been awaiting the inevitable IPO for years.

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It Gets Worse....Much Worse!

Yesterday we heard news from the latest TOPs meeting between TfL and the Taxi trade.

First, we were told that TfL had indeed submitted the E-Taxis in bus lane signs and that they were not commissioned by Manchester as published in Taxi paper. 

Second, we informed that the LTDA and Unite the union had voted against all meetings with TfL being minuted. 

It should be pointed out that the LCDC, UCG and RMT voted for minutes being taken and therefore should hold a majority. 

Now we have the news that after the Mayor’s big announcement on TV media and in the press, TfL have cut the number of PCOs from 330 to 250. 

Will Steve McNamara and Mike Hedges please make statements as to why they voted against having meetings with TfL fully minuted?

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LTDA’s E-Taxi Signage Article In Taxi Paper Confirmed As Fake News By TfL

With the amount of Fake News being banded about by a certain org trying to discredit other Taxi news sources, the London Cab Drivers Club, for the sake of clarity, asked TfL compliance if the signage featured in a post on Taxi Leaks (which was referred to as Fake news in the LTDA Taxi paper) was actually proposed to the DfT by TfL. 

At the recent TOPS meeting, TfL confirmed that it was indeed they who submitted the e-Taxi bus lane templates to the DfT for approval. 

They added that although the signage was approved, there are no plans (as yet) to introduce the signage on current bus lanes across London. 

But the question now needs to be asked, as the LTDA’s Richard Massett had access to the original templates, why did they crop the TfL signage out of the images shown in Taxi.

Why were they trying to cover up that TfL had submitted the signage and why did they infer that the signage was intended for Manchester. A statement that has now been shown to be FAKE.  

But it’s all cleared up now, the Fake News was not the post on Taxi Leaks, it was in fact the article that appeared in Taxi Paper. This has been confirmed by TfL. 

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Hero Taxi Driver Saves Regular Passenger From Blazing a House Fire.

Cristian Dumitrescu (left) with John Hawkins 

A hero Taxi driver spotted smoke coming from the home of one of his regular customers and ran into the building to rescue him.

Cristian Dumitrescu was driving along New North Road when he saw the fire emerging from one of the almshouses near Exeter College.

Aware that an elderly man - his regular customer John Hawkins - was likely to be inside he raced into the building and helped him to safety.

Cristian Dumitrescu (right) with John Hawkins who he helped rescue from a burning building

Both men went to hospital where they were treated for smoke inhalation.

Cristian said: "I was with a customer in my Taxi going to the station when I saw a house burning.

"I begged the customer to wait in the cab and I ran to the house and heard someone who was screaming for help.

"I opened the door and I got in the house...I heard a man's voice screaming for help on the first floor.

"I couldn't see him because there was too much smoke. I got to him and put him in my back and I got out from the house."

Jo Guscott, of Apple Taxis who Cristian drives for, said: "Cristian was doing a job and driving past when he saw smoke coming from the building and just had to stop to assist.

"He had to run upstairs to where the man was in his flat and he helped him to safety.

Firefighters on the scene of the fire in New North Road

"He probably saved his life.

"Cristian also came to the rescue of a man who fell of his mobility scooter in Stoke Canon.

"He really is our hero."

New North Road was closed for over an hour between Hele Road and Howell Road while fire crews tackled the blaze.

One crew from Danes Castle, two crews from Topsham and one crew from Crediton attended the scene.

Watch manager Sean Faulkner, from Danes Castle Fire Station said that the men escaped the building 'just in time'.

"We're unsure how the fire started at this moment," said Mr Faulkner.

"There was a fire in the first floor living room. One male was got out just in time as we arrived.

"Flames were issuing from the flat involved.

"We extinguished the fire from the property quickly and affectively and then used positive pressure ventilation to remove all the gases and make it safe for everyone to return.

"There's fairly severe damage - a lot of heat and flame damage and 100 per cent smoke damage.

"There's a big clean up operation but it could have been a lot worse.

"Fortunately smoke detectors were in the property and they alerted the occupier.

"It shows show important they are."

New North Road was fully reopen again by 4.30pm.

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