Uber has announced that it will make it easier for users to delete their accounts. The company will also facilitate easier access to privacy settings for people. The process is being known as Dear John internally (a reference to flushing stuff perhaps?) and it apparently took Uber over a year to design.
Dear John will allow users to delete their account from inside the application and then, get all their data removed permanently if they can but stay away for 30 days. So, don’t open the Uber application for 30 days after deleting your account and all your data is gone for good. Maybe its just me, but the extra long, 30 days period appears to have been influenced by the recent spate of #deleteUber campaigns that saw users pissed off with the company uninstall the app over a beef they had to pick with the cab aggregator. Many of them came back later, however.
Up until now, users were required to mail the Uber support team with an account deletion request. Predictably, the process involved a lot of human action and as such, was slow. Which is why Uber engineers spent over 1 year n designing a process that was faster and automated. Once it goes live, you can delete your account and expect all your data to go poof in a month.
Users deleting their account on the main Uber application will also lose it on the UberEats application. So make sure you know what you are getting into.
Meanwhile, the feature has already been tested — sort of. Remember when Uber came under fire for introducing surge pricing as an perceived attempt to disrupt a cab strike at JFK airport? Well, almost 500,000 people deleted the app and a version of Dear John was put up so as to deal with the huge inrush of deletion requests.
The process will also remove any contacts you may have uploaded, when you were attempting to use the company’s location sharing methods. The new features are expected to be available over the next few weeks.
