Uber employees regularly abused the company’s “God view” to spy on the movements of “high-profile politicians, celebrities and even personal acquaintances of Uber employees, including ex-boyfriends/girlfriends, and ex-spouses”, according to testimony from the company’s former forensic investigator Samuel Ward Spangenberg. Even Beyoncé’s account was monitored, the investigator said. 
 
 Spangenberg, who is suing the minicab company alleging age discrimination and whistleblower retaliation, made the claims in a court declaration in October. He says he told Uber executives including the company’s head of information security, John Flynn, and its HR chief Andrew Wegley, of his concerns around the lack of security, and was fired 11 months later. 
 
 As well as a lack of oversight regarding customer data, Spangenberg alleges numerous other ethical breaches at Uber. The company stored driver and employee information in an insecure manner, he says, while it operated a vulnerability management policy which allowed data to be stored that way if the company deemed there to be a “legitimate business purpose” for doing so. 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Uber said it ‘continues to increase our security investments and many of these efforts, like our multi-factor authentication checks and bug bounty program, have been widely reported’. Photograph: Carl Court/Getty Images 
 
 In his testimony, given under penalty of perjury, Spangenberg also objected to Uber’s protocols to deal with raids on its offices – a relatively common occurrence at the company, which has been frequently criticised for riding roughshod over local regulations. 
 
 “As part of Uber’s incident response team, I would be called when governmental agencies raided Uber’s offices due to concerns regarding noncompliance with governmental regulations,” Spangenberg said. “In those instances, Uber would lock down the office and immediately cut all connectivity so that law enforcement could not access Uber’s information. I would then be tasked with purchasing all new equipment for the office within the day, which I did when Uber’s Montreal office was raided.” 
 
 
 
 Spangenberg’s allegations were reported by the Centre for Investigative Reporting’s (CIR) Reveal project, but it isn’t the first time Uber has been accused of mistreating customer data. In 2014, Buzzfeed revealed the existence of the “God View” tool, after Uber’s New York general manager discussed using it to track a reporter’s journey. The tool’s existence appears to date back to 2011, when venture capitalist Peter Sims says he was tracked by a visitor to Uber’s Chicago offices, where the God View data was shown on a large public screen. 
 
 In a statement given to a number of media outlets, Uber said it “continues to increase our security investments and many of these efforts, like our multi-factor authentication checks and bug bounty program, have been widely reported. We have hundreds of security and privacy experts working around the clock to protect our data. This includes enforcing to authorised employees solely for purposes of their job responsibilities, and all potential violations are quickly and thoroughly investigated.” 
 
 Spangenberg told CIR that Uber had increased security provisions during his time there, as well as renaming the tool “Heaven View”. Uber confirmed that some employees – “fewer than 10” – had been fired for abusing the tool, and said that it needs to provide relatively widespread access for a number of reasons, including refunding customers and investigating accidents. To prevent spying on celebrities, Uber implemented a flag for searches for customers considered “MVP”, but Spangenberg pointed out that that did nothing to protect non-MVPs. 
 
 The news comes just two weeks after Uber updated its app to increase the amount of location information collected about users. The company said the new collection practices, which continue to send the user’s location for five minutes after they are dropped off, would be used to improve drop-offs and pick-ups, but it faced a backlash from users worried about the increased permissions. ||||| Facebook is investigating accusations made by a security researcher that a Facebook engineer used company data to stalk women online. 
 
 The accusations against the unnamed employee were lodged Sunday by Jackie Stokes, the founder of Spyglass Security. 
 
 "I've been made aware that a security engineer currently employed at Facebook is likely using privileged access to stalk women online," Stokes tweeted Sunday. "I have Tinder logs. What should I do with this information?" 
 
 Facebook said it was aware of the allegations and was investigating, noting that it couldn't comment on individual personnel matters. 
 
 "We maintain strict technical controls and policies to restrict employee access to user data," Facebook said in a statement. "Access is scoped by job function, and designated employees are only allowed to access the amount of information that's necessary to carry out their job responsibilities, such as responding to bug reports, account support inquiries, or valid legal requests. 
 
 "We have a zero-tolerance approach to abuse, and improper behavior results in termination," the company said. 
 
 The allegations arise amid heightened concern over customer privacy at the social network. The company has been grappling with questions about how it handles its users' data in the wake of a scandal stemming from a political data analysis firm's improper access to as many as 87 million user profiles. 
 
 Stokes' accusations are reminiscent of ones lodged against Uber in 2014. A BuzzFeed journalist reported that a top executive at the ride-hailing startup used an internal feature to track her without her knowledge. The feature, known as "God View," was available to Uber employees and allows them to see logs of Uber customer activity. 
 
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– Uber employees are being accused of using customer data to track "high profile politicians, celebrities, and even ... ex-boyfriends/girlfriends and ex-spouses," NBC News reports. That quote comes from a lawsuit filed by Ward Spangenberg in October but first reported by Reveal this week. The former forensic investigator at Uber is accusing the ride-sharing company of a multitude of things, including age discrimination, whistleblower retaliation, and encrypting data to keep authorities from seeing it. Spangenberg claims he was fired after objecting to Uber practices he considered "reckless and illegal." But perhaps of most concern to customers is Uber's alleged handling of their data. Five former Uber security professionals tell Reveal that Uber employees have "broad access" to customer data. “When I was at the company, you could stalk an ex or look up anyone’s ride with the flimsiest of justifications,” a former senior security engineer says. “It didn’t require anyone’s approval.” Uber responds that it's "absolutely untrue that 'all' or 'nearly all' employees have access to customer data," though it adds "fewer than 10" employees have been fired for abusing the ride-tracking "Heaven View" (formerly "God View") tool, the Guardian reports. It says employees need access to that tool for things like refunds and accident investigations. The company says it now flags any Heaven View searches for "MVP" customers, such as celebrities.