She was chatting with friends in a Lyft. Then someone texted her what they said

Anvi Ahuja noticed a "freaky" new text message from a number she didn't know right after getting back to her downtown Toronto apartment last month. 

The text was a transcript of the conversation she'd just had with her roommates during their eight-minute Lyft ride home from a friend's place.

"I was like 'who is tapping me?'" Ahuja said. "The driver didn't inform us that we could be recorded."

Within a few minutes she called the number the text came from and heard this looping, automated message: "We can't connect your call because your driver is not available right now."

"It sounded like a pretty standard Lyft message, which raised a lot more questions," she said.

Ahuja phoned Lyft that night looking for answers. In that initial call, she says a representative told her this was something the ride-sharing company was piloting. But then about a week later after following up with Lyft she received a written message from a member of the company's safety team which blamed the incident on the driver for recording her without her consent and said "proper actions" were taken against the driver. 

"These ride-sharing apps are big companies and people have a lot of sensitive conversations within cabs and they feel like they're secure," said Ahuja. 

"To know that nothing — even beyond our app experience — in the real world is secure anymore is really freaky and uncomfortable to me."

The company confirms the incident took place, but has offered varying explanations.

After CBC Toronto contacted Lyft about this story last week, a Lyft representative called Ahuja. She says they told her the company is running a pilot program where audio is recorded from some rides and then the transcript is supposed to be sent to the ride-sharing company for reference if a security issue is reported. 

In a statement to CBC, a Lyft spokesperson acknowledged that the ride-sharing company has an in-app audio recording pilot in select U.S. markets with "strict opt-in protocols" but said this incident is not related to that pilot program or any other feature being tested by Lyft. 

"Safety is fundamental to Lyft, and we take reports like this very seriously and will investigate and take action for violations of our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy," said the statement.

"We can confirm that the communication was sent via a masked number, and the driver did not have access to the rider's personal phone number."

Lyft's privacy policy says it works "with a third party to facilitate phone calls and text messages between riders and drivers without sharing either party's actual phone number with the other." And the company's recording device policy prohibits recording another person "without their express prior consent."