I don’t know how much you are concerned with people snooping into your private phone data (like location tracking), but the knowledge at what level people have been selling this stuff is getting more shocking by the day. The latest villain is the now THE WEATHER CHANNEL. NOOOOOOO Da***t! I love that app!
From THE HUSTLE:
“The Weather Channel app, owned by IBM, is being sued for misleading users and selling their location data to advertisers and investors. If the Weather Channel app loses, it could pay out millions to its 45m monthly active users.”
“The lawsuit, filed by the LA city attorney, accuses the Weather Company of leading customers to believe their location data would be used only for local forecasting. But IBM allegedly sold the personal data to advertisers (to help them geo-target potential customers) and hedge funds (to help them evaluate foot traffic). Since gathering and selling data without disclosure violates California law, LA now seeks $2.5k for each individual violation — a sum that could add up to millions.
The lawsuit is only getting started. For now, the Weather Channel insists its “disclosures are fully appropriate, and [it] will defend them vigorously.”
January 7, 2019 BY Conor Grant
With many references from Conor to THIS NYTIMES PIECE
Does this mean I have to stop using the WEATHER CHANNEL app to protect my privacy and teach them a lesson? Or do I just choose to let them sell data about where I am and where I’m visiting? Honestly, if they had put into the fine print of accepting their app meant giving up that info freely, I probably would have still downloaded the app BECAUSE IT IS AWESOME and free. I’m a bad weather wuss, so I research current and future forecasts a lot, and after trying many different weather platforms, I still with this app, and information from The National Weather Service at www.weather.gov
Do the walk of shame IBM, because you could have avoided this bad press and those future lawsuit payouts if you had just done a better job of notifying your users.
Susan Saunders 1/7/19
