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Tim Hortons coffee app broke law by constantly recording users' movements:
Canadian investigators determined that users of the Tim Hortons coffee chain's mobile app "had their movements tracked and recorded every few minutes of every day," even when the app wasn't open, in violation of the country's privacy laws.
"The Tim Hortons app asked for permission to access the mobile device's geolocation functions but misled many users to believe information would only be accessed when the app was in use. In reality, the app tracked users as long as the device was on, continually collecting their location data," according to an announcement Wednesday by Canada's Office of the Privacy Commissioner. The federal office collaborated with provincial authorities in Quebec, British Columbia, and Alberta in the investigation of Tim Hortons.
"The app also used location data to infer where users lived, where they worked, and whether they were traveling," the Office of the Privacy Commissioner said. "It generated an 'event' every time users entered or left a Tim Hortons competitor, a major sports venue, or their home or workplace."
Tim Hortons scrapped plans to use the app for targeted advertising but "continued to collect vast amounts of location data" for another year "even though it had no legitimate need to do so," the Office of the Privacy Commissioner said. Tim Hortons said it used aggregated location data "to analyze user trends—for example, whether users switched to other coffee chains, and how users' movements changed as the pandemic took hold," the federal office said.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday June 07 2022, @01:29PM (4 children)
Circa 2010 I worked at a "let's go to lunch" shop where the crew would eat out an average of 3.5 days per week. A lot of single guys just graduated from Uni, lunch was their "meal of the day" most of the time.
There were about 20 people in total, and generally there would be a group of 8-10 that would go one place, and another group of 4-6 that would go somewhere else, with the remaining 4-8 not going out for lunch that day. The groups were semi-fluid, with a lot of mixing on a pretty random distribution, and there were about a dozen "top" places that would get the lunch business with a dozen more on lighter rotation. There were people who would never go certain places, and few people wanted to go the same place multiple times within a week. Lunch would often consist of 15 minutes of discussion (sometimes more) about where to go and how the groups would form up. While this is all good social interaction and bonding, lunch itself was actually plenty of that and the constant repetitious decision/debate process got quite monotonous and dull. The "rules" were pretty straightforward, perfect for automation, but the data entry was a bitch. Even in the informal discussion, it took a while for everyone (who cared) to voice their preferences, recent lunches, etc.
I thought this would be the perfect problem for a tracking app to solve. Everybody's phone makes note of where they displace to within the 11am-2pm window and maps that to the restaurant list. People get to vote their preferences 0-5 on the various restaurants (default to 3), and maybe a preferred cooldown window before re-visiting a given place. For bonus points, the app could NFC to determine who is gathering to decide where to go to lunch, then instead of the meatbags chattering monkey calls for 20 minutes, the app could Monte-Carlo up a list of top preferences for the group gathered here, suggest possible re-groupings to make people happier about the restaurant selections, etc. All that would be required from the participants is installation of the app on every participant's phone, and one person in each group to view the choices on-screen. The group could still decide for themselves, but the choice list would eliminate 10+ minutes of chatter per day about "nah, I went there on Tuesday" and "maybe I'll go with the other group..." On balance, this hour per week multiplied by an average of 14 participants (700+ man hours per year) seemed like a good payback for the effort to develop the app, even if it did have to run on iOS and Android, just for the one shop - and if other places shared a similar culture: profit!
But... location services are a security treadmill, the apps would require maintenance, and that company was too flaky to be worth the investment of effort.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Freeman on Tuesday June 07 2022, @03:16PM (2 children)
This is how we get stupid stuff. Like Facebook, Twitter, and soon to be your "LunchMeet" app.
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 Tuesday June 07 2022, @05:31PM
"OutToLunch" app.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday June 08 2022, @02:22PM
Stupid is as stupid does.
- Forrest
As a society, I'd say that Facebook marks some positive progress from I Love Lucy and soap advertisements. Twitter.... eh, not so much. LunchMeat hasn't happened, yet- that would be real progress.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Tuesday June 07 2022, @04:36PM
Apps could provide their location information to the user in a visible form [google.com] before or selectively transmitting it off-device. I bet that would go a long way towards that kind of transparency.
The simplest form of this would be those grocery store loyalty cards. If someone wanted to see how much e.g., Flaming Hot Mountain Dew and pork rinds they bought over the last year, that kind of long-term history (in anticipatory dread of their doctor asking to see it) would be +1 Informative, if not Insightful for them.