IBM Sued Again In Storm Over Weather Channel Data Sharing (theregister.com) 20
IBM is facing a new lawsuit alleging that its Weather Channel website shared users' personal data with third-party ad partners without consent, violating the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA). The Register reports: In the absence of a comprehensive federal privacy law, the complaint [PDF] claims Big Blue violated America's Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), enacted in 1988 in response to the disclosure of Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork's videotape rental records. IBM was sued in 2019 (PDF) by then Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer over similar allegations: That its Weather Channel mobile app collected and shared location data without disclosure. The IT titan settled that claim in 2020. A separate civil action against IBM's Weather Channel was filed in 2020 and settled in 2023 (PDF).
This latest legal salvo against alleged Weather Channel-enabled data collection takes issue with the sensitive information made available through the company's website to third-party ad partners mParticle and AppNexus/Xandr (acquired by Microsoft in 2022). The former provides customer analytics, and the latter is an advertising and marketing platform. The complaint, filed on behalf of California plaintiff Ed Penning, contends that by watching videos on the Weather Channel website, those two marketing firms received Penning's full name, gender, email address, precise geolocation, the name, and the URLs of videos he watched, without his permission or knowledge.
It explains that the plaintiff's counsel retained a private research firm last year to analyze browser network traffic during video sessions on the Weather Channel website. The research firm is said to have confirmed that the website provided the third-party ad firms with information that could be used to identify people and the videos that they watched. The VPPA prohibits video providers from sharing "personally identifiable information" about clients without their consent. [...] The lawsuit aspires to be certified as a class action. Under the VPPA, a successful claim allows for actual damages (if any) and statutory damages of $2,500 for each violation of the law, as well as attorney's fees.
This latest legal salvo against alleged Weather Channel-enabled data collection takes issue with the sensitive information made available through the company's website to third-party ad partners mParticle and AppNexus/Xandr (acquired by Microsoft in 2022). The former provides customer analytics, and the latter is an advertising and marketing platform. The complaint, filed on behalf of California plaintiff Ed Penning, contends that by watching videos on the Weather Channel website, those two marketing firms received Penning's full name, gender, email address, precise geolocation, the name, and the URLs of videos he watched, without his permission or knowledge.
It explains that the plaintiff's counsel retained a private research firm last year to analyze browser network traffic during video sessions on the Weather Channel website. The research firm is said to have confirmed that the website provided the third-party ad firms with information that could be used to identify people and the videos that they watched. The VPPA prohibits video providers from sharing "personally identifiable information" about clients without their consent. [...] The lawsuit aspires to be certified as a class action. Under the VPPA, a successful claim allows for actual damages (if any) and statutory damages of $2,500 for each violation of the law, as well as attorney's fees.
Ah yes, the famous Video Privacy Protection Act (Score:5, Insightful)
a bipartisan piece of legislation enacted in a surprisingly short period of time to protect the elite after one of their numbers had his privacy mildly exposed (and now also a law that protect the privacy of renting a dead media from a dead business model).
Would that our elected officials were that quick to defend my privacy and yours from rapacious Big Data monopolies. But for some reason they don't seem nearly as much in a hurry. Could it be that we voted for them but we're not elite enough to matter?
Re:Ah yes, the famous Video Privacy Protection Act (Score:5, Informative)
When I read the headline I thought it was about sharing weather data, which Trump/Project 2025 plans to charge for...
Re: (Score:1)
How? (Score:3)
by watching videos on the Weather Channel website, those two marketing firms received Penning's full name, gender, email address, precise geolocation, the name, and the URLs of videos he watched, without his permission or knowledge.
Someone needs to explain how this is possible. I realize that unlike the vast majority of people, I clear my browser info at least once a day (among other methods) to make tracking more difficult, but how can your full name, let your sex, be gleaned from watching a video?
Also, people watch videos on the Weather Channel? That site is a nightmare to look at, let alone try to get any useful off of.
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Re: (Score:1, Informative)
by watching videos on the Weather Channel website, those two marketing firms received Penning's full name, gender, email address, precise geolocation, the name, and the URLs of videos he watched, without his permission or knowledge.
Someone needs to explain how this is possible. I realize that unlike the vast majority of people, I clear my browser info at least once a day (among other methods) to make tracking more difficult, but how can your full name, let your sex, be gleaned from watching a video?
Also, people watch videos on the Weather Channel? That site is a nightmare to look at, let alone try to get any useful off of.
To answer your question, it’s useful to look at how the Internet’s basic technologies—like TCP/IP (the foundational Internet protocol) and HTML (the language of web pages)—work. These protocols were originally designed to share information openly and easily, not to protect privacy. This openness created opportunities for tracking when the commercial Internet and digital advertising came along.
Here's how data like your name, gender, geolocation, and video URLs can be shared without yo
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Weather Channel pushes visitors to "sign up" so that you can "save your locations" and other nonsense that they're actually just using a cookie for. (I didn't sign up, and I block all the ads and trackers and third party junk, and it still remembers my locations)
Get use to it (Score:2, Interesting)
Get use to it, with the Orange Clown soon to take office again, IBM's Weather may be the only source of Weather Info in the US. The Clown stated many times he wants to eliminate NOAA.
I download NOAA Data for use many times a day, I expect that to be gone in a year or so. When the demented person was last in office, I had issues getting that data. Biden came in and the issues cleared up.
Re: Get use to it (Score:1)
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And the MAGAs will get the best tornado warning that the 1920s had to offer. They shot themselves in the foot.
They fucked around, soon they will find out.
I do not wish them well (Score:1)
Personal data? (Score:2)
What possible valuable data could the weather channel have that isn't available in a million other databases? People watched videos of tornadoes?
IBM doesn't own The Weather Channel site anymore (Score:2)
IBM doesn't own The Weather Channel site anymore.
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This is not clear at all, but IBM bought a bunch of assets of The Weather Channel including weather.com and licensed the use of the brand on that domain. It appears that this is still owned by IBM.
Then The Weather Channel changed ownership a bunch of times, and even wikipedia gives conflicting accounts of who owns it now. A lot of people thought that the weather.com site had been sold again, but that isn't what was actually being reported.
Online reporting tends to conflate all the offerings under that banne
Re: IBM doesn't own The Weather Channel site anymo (Score:1)
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IBM doesn't own it anymore. IBM only retains access to the data. They also removed "An IBM Company" from their logos.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/2... [cnbc.com]