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Uber is cracking down on drivers who it says are manipulating their GPS locations — and the effort is causing headaches for some gig workers.
In July, an Uber driver named Andre got a notification that Uber had deactivated his driver account because, according to the ride-hailing service, he had faked his phone’s GPS location. He said he had no clue what that meant.
“I don’t know what this is,” he told Business Insider. “I didn’t GPS-manipulate anything. I’m not smart enough to do that.”
An Uber spokesperson told Business Insider that removing a driver from its platform “isn’t a decision we take lightly.” “We do it when we need to — to ensure the safe and reliable functioning of our platform,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
For years, gig workers have complained that companies like Uber and Instacart deactivate the accounts they use to earn money, often with little or no explanation. Now, some, like Andre, are getting swept up in Uber’s latest efforts to use geolocation to curb fraud on the app.
Some gig workers spoof their GPS locations to get better rides or delivery offers from apps like Uber and Instacart, for example. It’s one form of fraud that gig work apps are trying to prevent. In other cases, gig workers appear to be using accounts registered under someone else’s name.
But drivers say GPS technology isn’t always accurate.
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Andre said he met other Uber drivers in the same situation as him online and at Los Angeles’ Greenlight Hub, a support center for Uber drivers. On forums for drivers, such as Uber-focused subreddits, posters shared screenshots of similar emails that cited GPS manipulation as the reason that Uber had deactivated their accounts.
Andre told Business Insider that he’s now driving for Lyft in hopes of making up some of the income he lost by being locked out of his Uber account. He also said he plans to pursue arbitration with Uber — the dispute-resolution option that Uber mandates for drivers — as he tries to get back on the app.
Andre said he can see why the Uber app might have flagged his account. On some trips around Los Angeles, Andre said he noticed he wasn’t where his phone’s GPS said he was. Shortly after being deactivated, for example, he said his phone lost connectivity while he was in a tunnel. His iPhone showed him at the Crypto.com Arena through a map app.
The phone eventually updated with his accurate location when he reached the city’s Little Tokyo district, he said — creating a sudden two-mile jump based on his GPS location.
“I’m convinced that Uber’s automated system detected that Andre’s location was here, then I suddenly popped up here,” he said. That could’ve led Uber to believe that he was faking his location, Andre said.
Uber has yet to reactivate Andre’s account despite his attempt to appeal the decision, he told Business Insider. He said that’s left him without money to pay for rent and other living costs.
Another Uber driver in California said that he also received an email notifying him that Uber had deactivated his account in July due to alleged tampering with his GPS location.
The driver, who mostly delivered orders for Uber Eats, said that he had previously noticed that the GPS location that he saw on the Uber app was incorrect.
“In many situations that I was, for example, in the restaurant for a pickup, the Uber app showed that I was half a mile away from the location,” he said.
Uber acts on “reports of fraud or behavior that goes against our Community Guidelines,” the company spokesperson said. Uber reviews multiple signals, such as GPS signals and cellphone tower data, to determine whether fraud is likely.
Sergio Avedian, a part-time gig driver based in the Los Angeles area and senior contributor to the gig-driver-advocacy blog and YouTube channel The Rideshare Guy, said that the deactivations are evidence that Uber is trying to curb driver usage of GPS-spoofing apps.
Several years ago, those apps became popular among drivers that Avedian knew, he said. More recently, those apps have become less common, he said, as Uber has cracked down harder on their use.
The experience of having his Uber account deactivated — potentially based on location data — feels “dystopian,” Andre said.
“This is what happens when your boss is a robot and AI, and not an actual human being,” he said.
Do you have a story to share about Uber or other gig work? Contact this reporter at abitter@businessinsider.com or 808-854-4501.
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