from the you-didn't-read-all-1000-pages? dept.
The Weather Channel app settles suit over selling location data - 9to5Mac:
IBM and the Los Angeles city attorney's office have settled a privacy lawsuit brought after The Weather Channel app was found to be selling user location data without proper disclosure. The lawsuit was filed last year, at which point the app had 45 million active users.
[...] The dispute centers on how users were informed. iOS requires apps to use a permission request system built into iOS, and they must specify the reason they want location access. However, the text is provided by the app, and The Weather Channel text said only that it was to provide local forecasts and alerts.
[...] It made no mention of the fact that user location data would also be sold. Despite this, IBM claimed that it was 'transparent' about what it was doing with the data.
[...] The reality, however, was that this disclosure was made only within a 10,000 word privacy policy that it knew almost nobody ever reads.
Additional coverage at TheVerge, threatpost, and NBC Los Angeles.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday August 24 2020, @07:49PM
IBM was transparent!! As transparent as the Rocky Mountains! Want to see what's behind that rock face? Just start blasting and digging!
(Score: 2, Touché) by fustakrakich on Monday August 24 2020, @07:55PM
Users get a free update!
Oh... to see the lawyers fees...
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday August 24 2020, @08:37PM (4 children)
Maybe, I'm getting it confused with something else, but I've not had good past experiences with weather apps. #1 Semi-paranoid about location sharing. #2 Most of them use advertisements to make money. #3 Advertisements == Malware or Malware Magnet. Conclusion: Avoid like the plague.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 24 2020, @08:58PM (1 child)
I really wish NOAA would make their own thing that could be publicly funded and not require ad revenue, etc.
(Score: 5, Informative) by zoward on Monday August 24 2020, @09:27PM
I just point my mobile browser to https://www.weather.gov, [www.weather.gov,] with corrdinates for my locality, then put a shortcut on my home page. It's pretty much all that most phone apps are anyway. It has no ads - your tax dollars pay for the info (if you're a US citizen; if not, well, free info!)
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Monday August 24 2020, @09:06PM (1 child)
In the coverage of hurricane Isaias recently, television here (WECT Channel 6) was advising viewers to "make sure you have our weather app" to learn about real-time tornado warnings during the hurricane's passing.
I am all for saving lives, and this does sound like good advice on that basis, but years ago I tried and uninstalled their weather app not for the malware reason (though it's sufficient), but because severe weather is not the only warning it carries--every little weather statement, small craft advisories, what have you, and the phone went off like it was a major weather emergency, day and night. No thanks. It can cry wolf somewhere else.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 24 2020, @09:12PM
Same reason I disabled all public alerts. I guarantee you I'm 100% useless for finding vehicles when I'm asleep in my bed.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by SomeGuy on Monday August 24 2020, @09:52PM (4 children)
I'm more surprised that there was a suit in the first place. Most "smart" phone users are cows who love this kind of crap.
Turn on the TV news and every 5 minutes it's "download our FREE news/weather/streaming app!!" like its the coolest thing in the damn world.
Why push this stuff so much? Being nice and providing a public service? Hahahahahah. No, they collect data from you and sell that data, they advertise with it, and it sells smart phones. It should be dead obvious but it's sickening how consumertards just can't see it.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by fakefuck39 on Tuesday August 25 2020, @01:15AM
Umm, they do see it, and like myself have no issue with it. I do have issues with entitled people. People who think "hey, this company is going to pay to develop and maintain the app, pay for the infrastructure for it, pay to find out the actual data to populate into the app, and I'm entitled to it for free."
Are you one of the guys complaining that housing is a right, so someone who worked, saved, and bought a house must now let you live there free? I bet you are. How's your blm cause going - have you trashed some soccer mom cars today so they can't get to work or block any public roads?
I don't like being tracked (mainly because it eats extra battery) so I don't have an app like this. I just have a google shortcut to "weather chicago" and I press it when I want to know. You however I guess are entitled to have some private company make an app for you. Because you're special. In a short bus kinda way.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday August 25 2020, @05:00AM (2 children)
Since when did pubs need apps?
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday August 25 2020, @09:38AM (1 child)
They save on staff costs - order at table from the "app", reduce number of bar staff required. Consumer doesn't have to queue, so it makes sense. But it is a part of this sinister world where we all need a phone/credit card to even get a jar of beer.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday August 25 2020, @07:00PM
The asocial are welcome to their literally faceless modern technologically-gimicked-up bars, I'll be the guy in the grungy old place round the corner in the chunky-knit jumper. Don't introduce yourself, I'll bore the tits off you for an hour.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Funny) by bmimatt on Tuesday August 25 2020, @01:25AM (1 child)
All your data are belong to apps.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday August 25 2020, @07:13PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves