Former Uber (UBER) employee Morgan Richardson has reportedly sent the company a cease and desist letter.
Richardson worked as an Uber customer service representative for about a year until this past November. According to the cease and desist letter, obtained by BuzzFeed, she was contacted multiple times by Uber’s legal and security and law enforcement director, Craig Clark, regarding leaked screenshots of internal data that show details of sexual assault complaints against Uber, and was visited at home by an investigator working for the company.
The screenshots were used in a BuzzFeed story challenging company claims that it had received some 170 sexual assault complaints in the course of about three years. When Uber was made aware of the leaked data, it responded by contacting customer service representatives who had recently searched the database for rape and sexual assault-related claims. “We are unsurprisingly concerned that sensitive, personal and confidential data has been shared with people outside Uber,” a company spokesperson told Fortune. “We believe that any company in a similar situation would do exactly the same.”
Richardson’s lawyer writes in the cease and desist letter that Clark called her on March 4 and emailed her two days later accusing her of leaking the data. He then writes that she was visited at 7:30 a.m. on March 25 by a man who “identified himself as an Uber investigator from California,” though he showed no ID. Richardson claims that she saw him look inside her mailbox and “place his ear against her door apparently to hear her inside.” When she refused to let him inside, he allegedly ignored her and trespassed. The letter claims he asked, “Do I scare you?” and told her, “THIS IS NOT GOING AWAY YOU KNOW.”
An Uber spokesperson said, “At no time did anyone enter this person’s home, attempt to intimidate her, or touch or even notice a mailbox,” adding that any customer service contractor who leaked that information “has violated multiple polices” including those regarding customer data protection. She said the company has an obligation to look into these kinds of situations, and investigations are ongoing.
