According to a statement issued by Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer on January 4, a lawsuit has been filed against the operators of the Weather Channel mobile app.
The lawsuit accuses the app operators of “allegedly covertly mining the private data of users and selling the information to third parties, including advertisers.”
Prosecutors say that the Weather Channel app uses geolocation technology to monitor user locations 24 hours a day even though it promised users that it would only use the location technology to provide personalized weather information. The suit alleges that the app “tracks users’ movement in minute detail, even when users are not actively using it.”
The lawsuit accuses the app operators of sharing user location data with parent company IBM as well as other third party companies for “advertising and other commercial purposes entirely unrelated to the weather.” The app operators also sold the data to hedge fund operators seeking information about consumer behavior, according to the lawsuit.
The Weather Channel app operators are also accused of deliberately obscuring the way it will use geolocation data information in its privacy policy in order to convince about 80% of users to allow the app access to that data.
https://cdllife.com/2019/popular-weather-app-tracking-selling-user-data-without-permission-according-lawsuit
https://www.lacityattorney.org/single-post/2019/01/04/CITY-ATTORNEY-MIKE-FEUER-FILES-LAWSUIT-ALLEGING-THE-WEATHER-CHANNEL-APP-MINES-USERS%E2%80%99-PRIVATE-DATA-WITHOUT-USERS-INFORMED-CONSENT
The lawsuit accuses the app operators of “allegedly covertly mining the private data of users and selling the information to third parties, including advertisers.”
Prosecutors say that the Weather Channel app uses geolocation technology to monitor user locations 24 hours a day even though it promised users that it would only use the location technology to provide personalized weather information. The suit alleges that the app “tracks users’ movement in minute detail, even when users are not actively using it.”
The lawsuit accuses the app operators of sharing user location data with parent company IBM as well as other third party companies for “advertising and other commercial purposes entirely unrelated to the weather.” The app operators also sold the data to hedge fund operators seeking information about consumer behavior, according to the lawsuit.
The Weather Channel app operators are also accused of deliberately obscuring the way it will use geolocation data information in its privacy policy in order to convince about 80% of users to allow the app access to that data.
https://cdllife.com/2019/popular-weather-app-tracking-selling-user-data-without-permission-according-lawsuit
https://www.lacityattorney.org/single-post/2019/01/04/CITY-ATTORNEY-MIKE-FEUER-FILES-LAWSUIT-ALLEGING-THE-WEATHER-CHANNEL-APP-MINES-USERS%E2%80%99-PRIVATE-DATA-WITHOUT-USERS-INFORMED-CONSENT
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