United Kingdom

A delivery driver hands over your takeaway on a Friday night but you probably don’t give the exchange too much thought.

Food delivery apps pride themselves on offering safety and tracking features such as including the name and photo of a rider – but the truth is you don’t really know who you’re opening your front door to.

An i investigation has uncovered a growing black market for renting accounts on apps including Deliveroo, Uber Eats and Just Eat, with more than 100,000 people subscribing to Facebook groups where people can rent, buy or sell profiles in the past three years.

Your food may have been dropped off by a ‘substitute’ rider, someone who has rented a profile on an app from another worker without having to register and will likely have avoided the strict vetting process official riders undergo.

It is a loophole that can be exploited by those who would fail a criminal background check or are in the country illegally, with activity on the Facebook groups, seen by i, indicating the majority of people wishing to rent out a profile on an app do not go through any level of vetting and do not meet the legal criteria to work in the UK.

Three women’s rights groups said they were concerned by the findings of i‘s investigation and warned that women were being put at risk of violence and sexual harassment by the practice of allowing substitute drivers to be effectively untraceable.

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There are also concerns that some substitute workers are being exploited by traffickers and gangs in breach of the Modern Slavery Act. One expert said that the UK’s “hostile immigration environment” is pushing people into precarious work and that more scrutiny should be on Government policy and the business model of food delivery companies.

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Analysis by i shows demand for renting delivery app profiles through Facebook is growing. One such group has gained almost 28,000 members in less than 18 months.

People using these Facebook channels to find work can pay an up-front deposit and a weekly rental fee, which is usually between £70 to £100 a week, to get a rider account. Buying a profile is less common, with some fetching up to £5,000. There are no caps on how much a rider can charge but the rules state they must pay the courier.

A substitute rider operating in the black market is vulnerable on a number of levels. For example, they are required to hand over large sums of money up-front and they are reliant on the account holder honouring their agreement and transferring their earnings whether they are renting or have bought the profile.

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