Los Angeles Accuses Weather Channel App of Covertly Mining User Data

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/03/technology/weather-channel-app-lawsuit.html

By Jennifer Valentino-DeVries and Natasha Singer
The New York Times
Jan. 3, 2019

The Weather Channel app deceptively collected, shared and profited from 
the location information of millions of American consumers, the city 
attorney of Los Angeles said in a lawsuit filed on Thursday.

One of the most popular online weather services in the United States, the 
Weather Channel app has been downloaded more than 100 million times and 
has 45 million active users monthly.

The government said the Weather Company, the business behind the app, 
unfairly manipulated users into turning on location tracking by implying 
that the information would be used only to localize weather reports. Yet 
the company, which is owned by IBM, also used the data for unrelated 
commercial purposes, like targeted marketing and analysis for hedge funds, 
according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit accuses the Weather Channel of 
manipulating users by implying that tracking data would be used only to 
localize weather reports.

The city’s lawsuit cited an article last month in The New York Times that 
detailed a sprawling industry of companies that profit from continuously 
snooping on users’ precise whereabouts. The companies collect location 
data from smartphone apps to cater to advertisers, stores and investors 
seeking insights into consumer behavior.

[...]

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