Lime scooters hacked to play offensive sexual messages to riders

By dpa | 25 April 2019


BRISBANE: Someone's been up to some mischief in Brisbane: eight Lime scooters had to be removed from the city's streets after the scooters' internal files were hacked to play offensive sexual messages.

The company's electric scooters, which are designed to play an audio recording when locked and unlocked, were hacked so that users were confronted with inappropriate messages when starting their trip in the Australian city.

"Okay, if you’re going to ride my ass then please pull my hair, okay?" one scooter says in a video circulating social media. Footage from local broadcaster 7 News Brisbane showed a row of scooters blaring out the offensive recordings.

Not all of the hacked recordings are quite as explicit, with one other reportedly saying: "No, where you go?" when the scooter was returned.



The Californian company, which has rapidly been adding fleets of scooters to cities across North America, Europe and Australia, said it was "disappointing" that someone had hacked the scooters' internal audio files. "It's not smart, it's not funny," Lime said in a response to the Brisbane Times.

Funny or not, the prank is more than an embarrassment to Lime, and reveals the potential safety risks posed by flawed software in fast-growing mobility startups.

Lime's software already came under scrutiny in January when the company's scooters, which can travel up to 25kph, started inadvertently braking and throwing riders off in several cities.

After numerous reports of injuries, the company later said it had fixed the error and admitted that risks like these, while small, could not be entirely eliminated.


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