Uber hack: What you need to know

Uber is facing another regulatory crackdown after the company admitted to paying hackers $100,000 to keep a massive security breach in 2016 quiet.

Authorities in Uber’s top two markets—Britain and the United States—as well as Australia and the Philippines said they would investigate the company's response to the data breach, according to Reuters. Stateside, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said it is evaluating “serious issues” raised in Uber's handling of a data breach, while the ride-hailing company said it has been in touch with the agency and is “ready to cooperate.”

Cyber security expert Morgan Wright told FOX Business’ Maria Bartiromo that “we have a right to know if our information has been taken, and if this is not criminal, it should be.”

He added that he would expect this information to end up on the dark web.

The attack alone is disconcerting. Unfortunately, this is not the first time there have been concerns about the safety of our personal information once it is in the hands of tech companies. Uber has already been caught tracking riders’ movements after they had left the car and closed the app. Google has also tracked Android users.

The Uber security breach exposed the personal data from around 57 million accounts and included the names, email addresses and mobile phone numbers of global Uber users and the names and license numbers of 600,000 U.S. drivers.

While the latest hack did not include highly-sensitive information such as Social Security numbers, it is another reason to question the safety of our information after we willingly hand it over to these companies.

Wright noted that he moderated a MIT panel that included a former NSA lawyer, in which he posed the question “Who do you fear more: The NSA, the CIA, FBI or Amazon, Facebook or Google,” and the answer was, without a doubt Amazon, Facebook and Google, because they are collecting far more information.

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He added that if the government did what Uber just did, there would be an uproar and congressional investigations.

When it comes to the hack, the company responded by firing two employees who were at fault for the response to the hack. Uber’s new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said he only recently found out about the hack.

“None of this should have happened,” he said, adding that the company is changing the way they do business.