More than a couple weather apps have recently come under fire for their handling of user data, either by collecting too much or allegedly tracking users without their permission. Now, the maker of yet another popular weather app is being accused by the city attorney of Los Angeles of deceiving millions of users and profiting from their location data.
More than a couple weather apps have recently come under fire for their handling of user data, either by collecting too much or allegedly tracking users without their permission. Now, the maker of yet another popular weather app is being accused by the city attorney of Los Angeles of deceiving millions of users and profiting from their location data.
The lawsuit was filed Thursday, according to the New York Times, which has been reporting on the app’s alleged misdeeds. As part of a larger investigation last month into the practice of companies tracking user location data for profit, the Times reported that the Weather Channel app—part of the Weather Company, which was acquired by IBM in 2015 —didn’t “explicitly disclose that the company had also analyzed the data for hedge funds.” While the app did disclose how some user data would be used in its privacy policy and privacy settings, it did not alert users in a prompt used to gain access to their location data.
