In 2019, a civil society organization called Unwanted Witnesses carried out an evidence based research into SafeBoda’s privacy policy and they discovered that something about it wasn’t in line with the Data protection and Privacy Act of 2019 of Uganda.
Yesterday, Unwanted Witness released a report that gave a detailed account of how SafeBoda as been using a third party app to get users’ information without their consent.
According a report that was released yesterday, SafeBoda- a transportation app that exists in Uganda, Kenya and Nigeria was using a Software Development Kit that linked users information to Facebook. Users of the app didn’t have to have Facebook accounts or the Facebook app on their phone for their information to be shared with Facebook.
According to Unwanted Witness, they contacted SafeBoda about the Software Development Kit when they found out about it and they;SafeBoda removed the Facebook tracking app. Unfortunately, they went on to use a another third party app called Clever Tap.
CleverTap is a third party that collects users’ information without their consent. The app collects phone numbers, location, time zone, the user’s phone type, user-names and the user’s internet provider.
According to Section 7 of the Data Protection and Privacy Act of 2019, a person shouldn’t collect or process personal data without the prior consent of the data subject expect where the collection is; authorized by law,for performance of a public duty for national security, for prevention, detection, investigation, prosecution or punishment of an offense or breach of law or for medical purposes and for compliance with a legal obligation to which the data collection is subject.
Section 10 the Act also protects the data subject’s right to privacy by prohibiting the collection or processing of personal data in a manner that infringes on the privacy of the data subject.
The SafeBoda app is used by over 1,000,000 people in Uganda, Kenya and Nigeria and each of those users’ personal information has been shared with a third party app without prior knowledge or consent. Therefore it is in breech of both Section 7 and 10 of the Data Protection and Privacy Act.
SafeBoda has not yet given any statement about the findings of the report and hundreds of people continue to use the app today.
However, the report poses questions of how “safe” the users of the app actually are since their personal information has already been shared with a third party app.
Click here to read the full report.
