https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/03/technology/weather-channel-app-lawsuit.html
By Jennifer Valentino-DeVries and Natasha Singer
The New York Times
Jan. 3, 2019
The Weather Channel app deceptively collected, shared and profited from
the location information of millions of American consumers, the city
attorney of Los Angeles said in a lawsuit filed on Thursday.
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 lawsuit accuses the Weather Channel of
manipulating users by implying that tracking data would be used only to
localize weather reports.
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.
[...]
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