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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: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 05 2019, @01:46AM (1 child)
I'm glad every app possible is stealing as much info as possible on everyone they can. Because it makes my own data mere noise in the vast amount of crap they're getting.
Of course I'd prefer it if no one collected such data from anyone, for any reason. But that ain't the world we live in, more's the pity. So since they've been siphoning up data and they're going to keep siphoning up data, then (IMO) the only way to fight it is to drown them in so much data that it's mostly all noise.
It'd be nice if anyone wrote an app that didn't block other apps from stealing data, but force fed the other apps incredibly fake data. "Oh, fifty million people seem to be visiting the Smithsonian Museum at the moment." "Half the population of India suddenly seem to have flown to Panorama Point, Nebraska." "All Android users appear to be randomly and evenly distributed around the globe. Even the oceans." "Every Apple user in Denmark just searched for articles on Discordianism."
(Score: 2) by Spamalope on Saturday January 05 2019, @09:46AM
It'd be too easy to filter most of that out.
I'd like to see one that links random groups of users and swaps the spy data.
They'd get 100% legit data but coming from randomized sources so it's hopelessly poisoned.
Filtering that would be like trying to spam block using your legit emails to train the AI.
It'd be neat to have a web browser plugin that does that with desktop tracking info too.
They're so intent on hoovering up the most data, so it's easier to throw rocks into the vacuum than it is to stop them from getting anything.