Consumers using gig economy apps may be interacting with unauthorized workers without even realizing it, a growing problem that could create customer safety issues.
Delivery apps — and to a lesser extent, ridesharing apps — have come under scrutiny due to concerns about account sharing, which often involves an illegitimate courier or driver using someone else’s credentials. The companies say they’re taking action to root out the problem and protect customers.
Some unauthorized couriers pay as much as $300 to $500 per month to rent a working account, according to media reports. Accounts are also being shared among friends and family.
This type of fraud has been documented in cities like New York that are processing large numbers of migrants, who lack work authorization for at least 180 days.
All of the delivery and rideshare apps require a Social Security number from workers, but account sharing is a common workaround, says Sean McNee, vice president of research and data at DomainTools, an internet security company.
“Most frequently, this occurs with family members where one family member may be in the United States, has the right to work, has a driver’s license, sets up an account. Then when other family members come to the U.S., they then join this account illegally and share the account,” McNee says.
If two or more workers alternate using the same vehicle to make deliveries, they can share the car payments and the insurance cost as well as the account itself, McNee says.
While the migrant work issue is getting the most attention, other people who may try account sharing include drivers and couriers who can’t get approved to work because they have criminal records or are uninsured.
Concerns grow about account sharing on gig work apps
Last month, three Republican senators raised concerns about account sharing in a letter to Grubhub. Similar versions of the letter (which veers into fear-mongering about hypotheticals) were also sent to DoorDash and Uber Eats.
“Deliveries routinely occur late into the night, compounding the dangerous situation, and — if the unimaginable happened — there would be little to no way to track the immigrant or bring them to justice,” the letter said. It focused exclusively on how immigrants without work authorization were using the apps.
In reality, there haven’t been many issues of theft or crime by account-sharing drivers. Most of these couriers are breaking the rules because they have an immediate financial need, says André Ferraz, co-founder of Incognia, a fraud prevention service that works with food delivery companies.
“I would say it’s been uneventful. Usually, it’s just like someone that wasn’t authorized to use the platform that is trying to make some money,” Ferraz says. “There are very few cases in which these drivers are doing something wrong, like are attacking the consumer or trying to do anything else. So it’s not really a big issue for the consumer. It’s a bigger issue for the platform.”
Delivery and rideshare apps say they have no tolerance for account sharing or workers using false identities.
A Grubhub spokesperson says customer safety is a top priority and pointed out protections to stop this activity, including its background check process and the disciplinary actions (including termination) the company takes against accounts that violate terms of use. Grubhub also says it performs motor vehicle history checks.
Companies have their own motivations to stop account sharing. For one thing, fraudsters are more likely to cancel or miss deliveries than other drivers, according to Incognia’s research. There could also be major liability issues if a courier or driver gets in an accident and it turns out they aren’t who they were representing themself to be.
“There’s a variety of interests at play here,” McNee says. “On the one side, the companies must be happy to see a large increase in the number of hours driven, in the number of people registered to use their platform, in the total number of trips successfully completed. However, on the other side, this does open up the companies to larger risk.”
Asked if the apps are doing enough to stop account sharing, Ferraz says, “They’re trying, they’re trying hard, but I would say it’s not enough… The techniques that are in place are not enough.”
He says gig work companies are dealing with a tough challenge because people are finding workarounds to identity verification, document verification and facial recognition systems. And account sharing isn’t the only problem at hand: A second, closely-related form of fraud occurs when couriers or drivers use stolen documents from the dark web to commit identity theft and create accounts on these apps.
What the delivery apps say
In similar statements, DoorDash, Instacart, Uber and Grubhub told Money they are focused on strengthening defense systems to stop bad actors from using false identities.
“We have robust safeguards in place to help ensure that every Dasher is who they say they are,“ a DoorDash spokesperson said. “Make no mistake: Everyone who dashes must have gone through identity verification and a criminal background check, and anyone attempting to dash without authorization will be deactivated.”
The company says it has a system to require re-verification of a courier’s identity if there are suspicious signals of account sharing. Couriers get a prompt requiring them to submit a picture, which must match the government ID photo on the account.
Location data and device info can signal possible instances of fraud. For example, it should always be a red flag if several different phones are using the same account, or if multiple devices are accessing the same account from very different locations, Ferraz says.
Uber says its defenses include checking for criminal records at the local, state and federal levels, re-screening drivers each year and constantly monitoring for new offenses. The company acknowledged the difficulty of the task as fraudsters get more sophisticated.
“The methods of scamming and defrauding companies are constantly evolving, and at Uber we’re committed to investing in robust anti-fraud systems and detection capabilities to keep up with new and enhanced fraud techniques,” an Uber spokesperson said.
The rideshare and delivery companies encourage customers to make a report in the app if a driver or courier doesn’t match their profile.
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