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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 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.