‘Ghost’ Uber drivers take real payments from Chinese users without providing rides
Uber China has refunded victims of a “ghost driver” scam experienced by Chinese users in recent weeks, with an employee of the car-hailing app suggesting the racket could be a gang crime, as the photoshopped IDs of the drivers involved are all similar.
Passengers from six cities including Beijing and Shanghai have told media their ride requests were answered by scammers who have come to be known as “ghost drivers” in the past two weeks, news portal The Paper.cn reported.
The drivers accepted ride requests on the service but did not contact or pick up the passenger, the report said.
Some passengers cancelled the trip themselves after receiving the drivers’ pictures, which had been photoshopped to show a twisted face with pale skin and dark lips, and in other cases, the drivers claimed the passengers cancelled the trips on arrival. In both situations, the Uber users were charged a minimum fee for the cancelled trips.
The employee said the purpose of the altered photos was also to circumvent Uber’s facial recognition technology, which was designed to enhance its control system and provide additional safeguards for both drivers and passengers when it was introduced by the company in April.