Also heard of uber drivers hiring illegal immigrants to drive under their uber account, not sure of the credibility of these reports.
Part of the reward is a reputable account as a saleable asset. It's just like selling a company or passing it on to your children. If Joe's Handmans or Joes' Dogwalkers no longer includes "Joe" that's not supposed to be a scary situation, its part and parcel of why people work for themselves.
Now if indies aren't really expected to have owners rights, then they ought to get employee protections.
Your assessment is wrong. Joe's plumbing is a legally distinct entity that people understand is represented by a variety of different individuals.
An account on a gig site that represents that you are Joe Smith is different on the face of the matter because you are contractually liable for providing accurate info to potential clients and the company. They signed up for Joe not someone Joe vetted.
You breached the agreement under which you agreed to work with the company that is connecting you to work.
You misled the party hiring the company and if anything goes wrong and you let Bob Johnson masquerade as you have fun getting sued by the agreived party and reaping the bad press.
The company will ultimately delete the account when or if your FRAUD is detected meaning you will also be guilty of defrauding the buyer.
The person using the account is guilty of exceeding authorized access on cfaa you are potentially guilty of assisting them.
If you want the benefits of being a corporation you need to incorporate you cannot fraudulently sell your Joe Smith personal account on wag or Uber or what have you.
If you want to hold someone to a 'name must match' standard, then I think you hire them personally so they are your employee. For someone using Uber, they theoretically do not care who the driver is so long as it is a 'valid driver' as per marketplace standards. To them, they are doing business only with Uber, not specifically with any individual driver, so any disputes are between Uber and driver or Uber and customer.
If something goes wrong, as you said it's between Uber and whomever they signed a contract with regardless of whom is driving the car at the time but that isn't a higher standard than any other B2B contract.
Personally, I would not mind laws put in place saying that if you want to higher 1 person for 1 job, and the name must match, then you have to classify them as at least a part-time employee.
It's also IRS fraud, there is no background check, the list of issues with this is just huge.
There are plenty of reasons to care - undocumented people are a legal liability for both the passenger and Uber.
[0] https://immigration.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=...
The finger-pointing likely to result from an incident would make this driver as good as uninsured.
I guess uber has an insurance policy that covers their drivers during rides now, so hopefully that kicked in to take care of your friend.
Everyone should read their insurance policies to know their exclusions.
In the US. It's not clear if they have this anywhere else.
I think that was one of the greatest lies of Uber at the start "just drive your car for money in your free time!" - that's all great, but no private car insurance would cover you while doing that.
Total your vehicle? Personal insurance won't touch it, and the Uber coverage you thought you had is useless.
The only way for commercial drivers to be covered by the same policy is to price the risk of an unknown number of commercial drivers into everyones policy.
All you have to do is be upfront about it, and willing to pay.
Yes, it does cost more to cover employees as opposed to owner/operators of a business venture, but it it is not impossible (if it were taxis would not be able to exist).
What is probably true is the default insurance given out by Uber will not cover people not listed on the policy, and only the person contracted with Uber is listed on the Uber-backed policy.
Beyond that
People driving under other people's Uber accounts don't have a license or are otherwise ineligible to drive for Uber (criminal, underage, etc) otherwise they'd get their own Uber account. Uber literally pays people to sign up as drivers - there's no legitimate reason to drive under someone else's Uber account.
Commercial Insurance would probably exclude coverage for any incidents that happen when an unlicensed driver is using someone else's Uber account.
Business done without a solid basis is often high risk. That risk unlikely to be worth it.
Finally, as a basic matter of principle, I do not do business with people who are dishonest.
Doing that is on par with debating liars.