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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
[...] 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 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.
[...] “If the price of getting a weather report is going to be the sacrifice of your most personal information about where you spend your time day and night,” said Michael N. Feuer, the Los Angeles city attorney, “you sure as heck ought to be told clearly in advance.”
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday January 04 2019, @06:54PM (12 children)
I've avoided the weather channel app like the plague. Which is likely what it transmits to it's users along with the weather report.
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: 3, Informative) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Friday January 04 2019, @07:40PM (1 child)
If you must use it, visit their website. Noscript, cookies autodelete, Ghostery, uBlock Origin and clearing your cache upon exit will do a reasonable job of limiting the amount of data you leak out to them (I say reasonable, because these addons probably collect data on you too...)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 04 2019, @09:50PM
ghostery? found the windows user... closed source "ad blocker" written by the ad companies. wow.
(Score: 5, Informative) by zoward on Friday January 04 2019, @07:55PM (8 children)
I don't get why people don't use the National Weather Service's site - www.weather.gov. It's where the Weather Channel is getting their data from in the first place, and is paid for with tax dollars. No ads, no tracking
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 04 2019, @08:11PM (2 children)
Wow, only in america.
In australia, the bom.gov.au site carries advertising - sigh!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 04 2019, @11:45PM
No, not only in America. Canada has no tracking either. It's a very reliable site and they do a good job with the weather.
https://weather.gc.ca/canada_e.html [weather.gc.ca]
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 05 2019, @12:18AM
Only in Australia!
(Score: 2) by TheFool on Friday January 04 2019, @08:53PM
Agreed, the NWS is the better option. That's mainly what I use (although I do have a fancy radar app).
My guess is that it's because there is no "app". People can't do much more these days than type "weather" into whatever app store they have and poke the one with the highest download count. Even that might be a stretch, as I imagine some of those downloads came from voice commands.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by nwf on Friday January 04 2019, @09:45PM (2 children)
The Weather Channel, Accuweather and the like get information from NWS, but they add in other stuff. If you compare their forecasts, they are all somewhat different. If you want actual conditions, these services update much more frequently. WC is particularly good with that, but that's about it. NWS's data is rather hard to read at a glance and they don't seem to provide a custom forecast to a specific zip code, just the general area.
But I stopped using WC's app because it's just garbage. Slow, buggy, terrible UI. Accuweather's forecasts seem better, but their current conditions are off by like an hour.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 04 2019, @10:36PM
I might be wrong, but I believe the NWS only uses the US weather model whereas Accuweather and the Weather Channel also use the European weather model (and perhaps others) and base their forecasts on combining model outputs.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Joe Desertrat on Friday January 04 2019, @10:50PM
You're still far better off visiting your local news station's site and getting their weather reports rather than a national site like TWC or Accuweather. Even better if you look at the radar which most have on their website, it doesn't take much effort to learn enough to make an accurate forecast of your own, at least for the next few hours. I would avoid all the apps and just visit the website. Oh, and look out the window once in a while. Of course, if one is using a smart phone for all this they have sacrificed privacy anyway...
(Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Saturday January 05 2019, @03:12AM
It's what I use.
You can enter in any map coordinates [weather.gov]. The hourly weather forecast graphs [weather.gov] are particularly useful.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 04 2019, @08:03PM
NOAA's radar site is plenty fine for me.