The taxi service Uber has been fined 148 million dollars, a good bit over a billion kronor, after the company chose to remain silent about a massive data breach in 2016.

The payment is an agreement between Uber and the US authorities.

Uber is understood to have become aware of the breach, which involved personal information from approximately 57 million customers and drivers, in November 2016. The taxi service is then said to have offered the data thieves $100,000 to destroy the information, and opted to keep the incident secret for a year.

”Embarrassing missteps”
In a statement, Uber says the agreement is part of efforts to live up to the company's standards of transparency and accountability ”after a series of embarrassing missteps”.

It was mainly American customers who were affected by the breach.

Source: TT