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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: 5, Insightful) by SomeGuy on Friday January 04 2019, @08:25PM (1 child)
Sigh.
It seems like everyone wants you to download some "free" new/weather app crap these days. All of the network TV news programs take every chance they get to tell you how now is the perfect time to download their free crapp to your toy cell phone.
I always joke how these are "free news/weather/malware" apps.
I guess normal people see these as a generous service with no catches.
But it would make no sense for anyone to give away an "app" or the service associated with it truly for free. I'm sure most have in-app targeted advertising and it comes as absolutely no surprise that these actually do collect every tiny little shred of information they can. Or that this information is stored, sold to the highest bidder, and aggregated with other data to further target you.
To me this is a "no shit, Sherlock!" sort of thing. But the average consumetard out there will never wake up to this, and even insist we all do things the same consumertardastic way they do.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Friday January 04 2019, @09:05PM
Download? Only weather app I have came with the phone, and the user isn't allowed to uninstall it! Otherwise, I'd rip it out in a heartbeat. But jailbreaking a phone is a total pain in the rear. Using a handy jailbreak app often feels like you're only breaking out of one jail to enter a different jail.