Re: Weather Channel App
Posted by
Chris in Tampa on 1/6/2019, 7:19 pm
I don't know if they'll win. Companies have massively long privacy policies for a reason, to protect themselves so they don't lose money. A lot of companies are guilty of this kind of thing.
"When asking users for permission to turn on location tracking, the iOS and Android app does not 'give users any reason to believe that their location data will be used for anything other than personalized local weather data, alerts, and forecasts,' the lawsuit said."
A lot of apps are like that. They don't get into all that stuff in a single little confirm box. I wish they wouldn't sell data. If your name is not attached, and there isn't personal information that could identify you, it might not be as bad as selling your name and location, but it's still not great. If they have all your tracking information, they would be able to figure out where you live. And then lookup your name. And when you're most likely to be out of the house. So if that data then got hacked by another outside party, or that outside party that it got sold to didn't have good intentions, it could be a problem.
I think there will need to be some kind of federal law about location tracking. Until then, I don't think this lawsuit will get anywhere.
It's an odd situation, because IBM owns The Weather Company, which puts out The Weather Channel app. The Weather Company sold The Weather Channel (tv network) to Entertainment Studios, which is owned by a comedian. Weather.com, Intellicast and Weather Underground are also owned by The Weather Company. It's really weird that The Weather Channel doesn't own weather.com. They have some of their content on there, but they don't actually own it. The Weather Channel licenses the use of their name from IBM the way I understand it.
It's a bizarre setup.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Weather_Channel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Weather_Company
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entertainment_Studios
I have The Weather Underground app, which sometimes doesn't work right, but don't currently have The Weather Channel app. I'm not exactly sure who owns The Weather Underground app. I guess The Weather Company might.
Speaking of TWC, I will be switching my cable service tomorrow so I'll be getting it again for the next two years. It's nice to have the option to turn them on. |
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1/6/2019, 8:18 am- Re: Weather Channel App - Chris in Tampa, 1/6/2019, 7:19 pm
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