Uber now insures drivers (and passengers) whenever its ridesharing app is turned on (update)

Surge pricing and conflict over its presence (in some cities) aren't the only issues facing Uber and other ridesharing services these days. Unanswered questions abound about who pays when an UberX driver gets into an accident. Rather than wait for insurance companies to figure things out -- and continue leaving its drivers and customers in a potential coverage no man's land -- Uber's extending its insurance policy to offer contingent coverage when a driver has the Uber app on, but isn't on a trip. Prior to this change, drivers' personal policies were the only insurance available, and it's unclear whether personal insurance will always apply in such instances. So, that's why Uber's now offering coverage up to $100,000 for bodily injuries (at a max $50,000 per person) and up to $25,000 for property damage if an accident happens and the driver's personal policy won't pay out.

The coverage the company's offering is certainly better than nothing, but it's far from the $1 million policy that kicks in when drivers are actually on a trip, and provides a lot less than most personal policies, too. That said, it's also important to mention that the move is really a stopgap measure. According to Uber, it wants to help out drivers "while the insurance industry and state governments update policies and regulations for the new world of ridesharing transportation." Makes sense to us, but might we recommend joining the Peer-to-Peer Rideshare Insurance Coalition to help them along?

Update: Uber contacted us to let us know that they are already a part of the coalition -- glad they took our advice before we gave it. Oh, and so did Uber competitor Lyft, which contacted us to say that it'll "provide backstop coverage to drivers when they are in match mode and are not providing rides. We will be rolling this out state-by-state in the days to come."

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Source: Uber

Tags: insurance, ridesharing, uber, uberx Next: Here's a much clearer look at Valve's new Steam Controller .fyre .fyre-comment-divider

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UK patients' data uploaded to Google servers, serious privacy concerns ensue (update)

The National Health Service (NHS) of England has come under fire lately amid plans to share patient data with researchers and private companies, and today's revelation will only pile on the privacy concerns. The Guardian reports that extensive patient information from its HES (hospital episode statistics) data has been uploaded to Google servers. Patients' stats -- including their addresses, hospital records and more -- was uploaded to Google's BigQuery analytics tool by management consulting firm PA Consulting.

The fact that sensitive patient data has been uploaded -- to Google servers outside of the European Union, no less -- may be a huge breach in and of itself, but members of Parliament and patient groups are also questioning exactly how much data has been shared. PA Consulting said it produced interactive maps of hospital data, which implies that location info from patients' files was disclosed. And according to The Independent, patient information has been used by marketers to "target ads on social media." Clearly, there are many unanswered questions here, though more details are likely to emerge as the UK's Health and Social Care Information Center (HSCIC) investigates.

Update: This article originally stated that the "entire patient database for the NHS" was uploaded to Google servers, though only the HES database was uploaded.

Update 2: We also originally reported that it wasn't clear how PA Consulting obtained this data, though it actually requested access and worked with the NHS. The company provided us with the following statement:

Over the past two years we have run a project to show the NHS how insight can be quickly and cost-effectively generated from large volumes of health data, enabling better care for patients. PA signed a data sharing agreement to gain access to the Hospital Episode Statistics dataset from the Health and Social Care Information Centre. The dataset does not contain information that can be linked to specific individuals and is held securely in the cloud in accordance with conditions specified and approved by HSCIC. Access to the dataset is tightly controlled and restricted to the small PA project team.

PA Consulting also directed us to this statement from the HSCIC, which confirms its agreement to share anonymized data with the consulting firm. It also confirms that the NHS Information Center was aware that PA Consulting uploaded data to Google BigQuery, but that Google employees were restricted from accessing the information.

(Photo credit: Getty Images)

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Source: The Guardian, The Independent

Tags: breach, data collection, data sharing, google, NHS England, privacy, uk Next: Microsoft's new Office Graph will help you discover what's trending around your workplace .fyre .fyre-comment-divider

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Judge rejects ACLU challenge, says NSA telephone data collection is legal (update)

We don't expect this back and forth to flame out any time soon, of course, but a US District judge in Manhattan certainly issued a blow to an American Civil Liberties Union challenge of the National Security Agency's massive telephone data collection. The judge acknowledged that the agency has, indeed, been "vacuum

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