The company maintains that it's "deeply committed" to safe rides, and that its technology helps it protect people "before, during and after" their journeys. There's at least some truth to this. It has tightened some screening procedures, and has otherwise taken extra steps to both prevent incidents and deal with them when they show up.

The challenge is finding out whether or not the official figures tell the whole story. Uber isn't giving BuzzFeed a chance to look at the complaints themselves, for one thing. That's understandable given privacy concerns, but it makes it difficult to verify how many of the search queries are directly relevant. The screenshots alone show nine complaint subjects that are unambiguously about sexual assault -- it doesn't bode well if one leaker can quickly find 5 percent of incidents. This doesn't mean that Uber is hiding anything. However, it could make it tough for critics to accept the figures at face value.