Weather Channel App To Change Practices After LA Lawsuit (apnews.com) 32
The operator of The Weather Channel mobile app has agreed to change how it informs users about its location-tracking practices and sale of personal data as part of a settlement with the Los Angeles city attorney's office, officials said Wednesday. From a report: City Attorney Mike Feuer alleged in a 2019 lawsuit that app users were misled when they agreed to share their location information in exchange for personalized forecasts and alerts. Instead, the lawsuit claimed users were unaware they had surrendered personal privacy when the company sold their data to third parties. Feuer announced the settlement Wednesday with the app's operator, TWC Product and Technology LLC, and owner IBM. The app's disclosure screens were initially revised after the lawsuit was filed and future changes that will be monitored by the city attorney's office are planned.
"Users will now clearly know that they have the choice to provide access to their locations," Feuer said at a news conference, adding he hopes other companies will follow the app's model for transparency. "It shows that we don't have to sacrifice our privacy for things of value." IBM bought the app along with the digital assets of The Weather Company in 2015 for $2 billion but did not acquire The Weather Channel seen on TV, which is owned by another company.
"Users will now clearly know that they have the choice to provide access to their locations," Feuer said at a news conference, adding he hopes other companies will follow the app's model for transparency. "It shows that we don't have to sacrifice our privacy for things of value." IBM bought the app along with the digital assets of The Weather Company in 2015 for $2 billion but did not acquire The Weather Channel seen on TV, which is owned by another company.
When I see the laundry list of permissions (Score:5, Informative)
for an app that's supposed to tell me if it's going to rain. I usually either don't allow those permissions, or just delete the app.
I can still just use a lame assed web page to look at the weather.
I would like a nice app that would send me an alert if there was impending "severe" weather like thunderstorms or tornados, or a nice blizzard.
But I don't want to sell my "soul" for those alerts.
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The the BBC Weather app. Being the BBC it's light on permissions and doesn't sell your data. It's not the best but it's okay.
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"for an app that's supposed to tell me if it's going to rain. "
Where? In Burkina Faso?
Location detection spares you the effort to enter 'Buttfuck, Idaho' each time you want to know that.
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No, it spares you doing that once. Any decent app will save the location you enter, so allowing location is only useful if you travel to a lot of places and want to keep track of the weather. Which of course is plenty of people, but not everyone.
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"No, it spares you doing that once. Any decent app will save the location you enter, so allowing location is only useful if you travel to a lot of places..."
So you never leave your cave?
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Did you just stop reading there, or continue through the rest of the comment? Did you hallucinate some comment where I described my own travel habits?
allow location but disallow the SHARING of it? (Score:3)
the app will need your location to give you local weather
but giving it your location should NOT mean consenting to the sale of your data
Re: allow location but disallow the SHARING of it? (Score:3)
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Because rates for non-targeted ads are through the floor. Nobody wants to pay to spam out ads when they can target them at people who might actually want that product.
It's always been that way to a degree, with billboards and posters in certain locations being viewed by certain demographics more than others. Most newspapers will claim their readership represents a certain section of the population.
Re: allow location but disallow the SHARING of it (Score:2)
Pre-Internet advertising worked well enough for all parties involved and nobody's privacy was violated. Generally they had zip code or census tract level of demographics. Now you can make much more narrowly focused ads at the expense of our personal privacy. The worst part is that Facebook and Google still invade your privacy even if
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Because rates for non-targeted ads are through the floor. Nobody wants to pay to spam out ads when they can target them at people who might actually want that product.
Most targeted ads are just ridiculously wrong. I look at lots of things, because I'm generally curious, and then stupid ads come up trying to sell the stuff. Or I actually bought things, an then stupid ads come up telling me to buy the same thing again. Bought a very specific Christmas present for my daughter once, something that I have absolutely no interest in buying ever again, and they kept sending me apps for two years.
Guys, you are wasting more money with "targeted" ads, because they are somewhere
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Probably because you have gone to lengths to prevent being profiled. People who don't do that find them really creepy because they seem to know so much about them.
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So you get the app for free, and never give anything of value in return? That sounds like theft.
No, it sounds like every piece of software I've used this century. Many people really are willing to make software and let the world use it.
There are lots of weather apps on F-Droid; I use Forecastie. [f-droid.org]
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> So you get the app for free, and never give anything of value in return? That sounds like theft.
Gee, if only things like Open Source [wikipedia.org] or Public Domain [wikipedia.org] software existed.
Who knew that anyone using Linux [wikipedia.org] or Free/Net/Open BSD [wikipedia.org] were stealing! /s
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This is why you need GDPR. Then they have to get opt-in affirmative consent for that specific use (sale of data), and the request has to be clear and not buried in a 20 page ToS. You can refuse and they still have to provide the service.
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While using (Score:2)
IBM bought the app along with the digital assets (Score:3)
IBM also bought the top rated Android weather-underground app. Soon after they overhauled it with more ads and a new, unstable interface. Ratings went from 4.7 to 3.1 in a few months.
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The interface is a bit better and I haven't had problems with stability lately. It still has a bunch of ads that it didn't used to have.
I'm sticking with it -- it has better features than competing apps. I haven't found one I like better. I've tried -- the initial post IBM versions were really annoying. I found an old pre-IBM apk, turned off updates, and used that until Weather Underground finally blocked access through it.
So the new verison is usable now. But it's still not as good as the pre-IBM make
Stop using them (Score:2)
Has anyone tried to go to the Weather Channel web site? To use a phrase, "My god, it's full of scripts!".
Something as simple as plugging in your ZIP code to get your upcoming weather report returns not only what you asked for, a laundry list of impossibilities. How is it I get a listing for France if I put in a U.S. ZIP code?
And trying to navigate the site is a nightmare. You're never quite sure what you can or can't select or how to get to what you want to see.
As I have said multiple times, KISS is dead
Not over lack of accuracy? (Score:2)
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The WaPo article is several years old but historically TWC has had the most accurate forecasts [washingtonpost.com] across the US compared to other providers.
There is also a site called ForecastAdvisor [forecastadvisor.com] which shows provider accuracy down to the city/state level for the US using recent data. For instance, in the DC area, TWC was the most accurate for 2019, however AccuWeather was most accurate last month (July 2020).
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And according to that ForecastAdvisor site (thanks), everything is less accurate for my zip than it was last year except "persistence". Puzzling.
Free public information service (Score:3)
OK, you're already paying for your national weather service. It's one of those things that big gubbermint does with your taxes. It's an essential service for lots of people: airlines & airports, farmers, construction industry, etc.. A lot of people & a large percentage of our economies benefit from it. & it only really works if it's free & readily available to everyone. For this reason, most national meteorological services also develop smartphone apps so that more people can have more convenient access & provide services like localised severe weather warnings.
So why do private weather apps exist? Why do people pay &/or have their view of the weather reports obscured by advertising? The information's public. All these apps do is make reading the information (that they get from national weather services) more difficult & sometimes charge people for the inconvenience, as well as sucking up all the personal information they can & selling it to whoever'll pay, regardless of the consequences, e.g. debt collection agencies, law enforcement, scammers, & criminal organisations.
Just find your national (or state?) meteorological service, install their app, & all those privacy problems (should?) go away. (I'm not sure if all of them are free from advertising. That'll depend on what kind of government you have.)
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So why do private weather apps exist? Why do people pay &/or have their view of the weather reports obscured by advertising? The information's public.
Each provider -- public and private -- has their own forecasting models and systems, that's what you're really "paying" for (either selling your :s/soul/data or purchasing/subscribing to the app for the private co's). See sources in my previous comment [slashdot.org] where TWS, WU, AccuWeather etc. have historically outperformed NWS forecast products.
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Web (Score:2)
I have, maybe, two dozen apps on my phone. They are all things that *need* to be apps. Everything else is a web bookmark opening Firefox with all location/microphone/autoplay/user tracking turned off. What does the Wikipedia app buy you? Or eBay? It's slightly easier to navigate, but usually, that's it.
New iOS 14 feature (Score:2)