Using ride-share services like Uber and Lyft has already become fraught with safety concerns for women.
Over the years, as these ride-share platforms grew in popularity, passengers have reported that their drivers played music and audiobooks that made them feel unsafe, assaulted them, even broke into their home long after dropping them off.
A driver for Lyft is now sounding the alarm after she noticed that the app began labeling the passenger’s destination with their home address if it was saved that way in their app. TikTok user @authorofmanymuses says she noticed it a few weeks ago and is raising concerns about it on the platform.
“I have an urgent PSA to anyone who uses the Lyft platform,” she says in the video. “On Lyft, you can always just type in a business and usually it just pops in the business, which is great because it gives us a visual and we know exactly where we’re going and we’re not looking for addresses.”
However, the TikToker says the app has now been labeling passengers’ destinations as their home.
“So when you’re on the Lyft platform and you put home as your saved address, it’s telling us now that that is your home,” she says. “And that is not OK, at all, especially for women traveling alone.”
She says one of the first trips she noticed this happening occurred when she was transporting a woman to her home at 5am, raising concerns about passenger safety.
“I saw it for the first time a few weeks ago and I thought it was just a fluke, or maybe a glitch, or maybe some weird tag thing,” she says. “But this one right now is the second and the one that I just showed you was the third time it’s happened.”
She then explains how one can go about removing this feature from the Lyft app.
“So this is what you’re going to do: in your Lyft passenger app, it usually has on here ‘Home’, ‘Work’, …you’re going to go to this little edit tool right here, and then you’re going to come down here to ‘remove shortcut’ and that’s going to take the address off of the ‘Home’ thing,” she says.
She says she recognized that not every driver would abuse the information provided to them by the app, but that it is not unheard of, and she worries for the safety of passengers.
“Every job has creepy people, no job is exempt, but Uber drivers, it’s a little more personal,” she says.
The Daily Dot has reached out to @authorofmanymuses via TikTok direct message, as well as to Lyft via email regarding the video.
@authorofmanymuses As a driver this feature is extremley concerning for my passengers. While incidents with creepy drivers (and passengers!) are rare, they don’t need help confirming your place of residence. @Lyft Please fix this!!#greenscreen ♬ original sound – AOMM
While it is unclear whether the sharing of the “Home” label is standard across all driver experiences, the Lyft website states that some information, like a passenger’s destination address, is shared with drivers along with essentially any other information added to the passenger’s rider profile. This information includes their name, photo, and location.
Some viewers shared that they followed the poster’s instructions after watching the video, with varying levels of success.
“Went to the Lyft app and unable to remove shortcut,” one commenter wrote.
“I didn’t even finish the video before fixing this on Lyft,” another said. “Thank you!”
“Thank you. Just changed it,” one echoed. “I use Lyft/uber constantly..thank you.”
Even some viewers who identified themselves as Lyft drivers commented that they would be letting riders know about this if they saw it happening on their own trips.
“I haven’t noticed but I’ll be checking and let riders know,” one commenter wrote.
“I do lyft on the side. If i see this im def alerting my passengers so they can change it,” another said.
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