The Weather Channel Sued for App Privacy Violations

Weather Channel app helped advertisers track users movements lawsuit says

Yea, saw that on the news…IBM seems to think it’s ok. I have removed their app from all my devices.

The Facebook defense :lol:

Tracking me ? going to the toilet paper section of Hy-Vee and to take Lily home from school, I hope they can use that crap.

Interesting New York Times article about location tracking, mentions weatherbug too.

[quote]Precise location data from one app, WeatherBug on iOS, was received by 40 companies. When contacted by The Times, some of the companies that received that data described it as

That’s why I have all the apps on my phone set to While Using or Never and I never use the Weather Channel and Weatherbug apps.

Thanks, Niko, for this information. Another worry when there shouldn’t be one, at all.

I’ve wondered, in addition to this invasion into our world of privacy, is whether or not the applications that you do give permission to, really follow the rules. What I mean is, if you tell the OS that you want location services turned off, does that really happen, or is it really like a toggle switch that does nothing?

Can the programmers really just say screw it and still get and report location data back even though we think we’ve disabled that part?

There really is no careful analysis of code to make sure it doesn’t do all sorts of things that we don’t want it to. And there are some applications I stopped installing when they ask for permission (at least they asked) to access my photos and contact lists. All for things that are completely unrelated to what they were supposed to do. A photo program, sure. A map program, definitely not.

Yes, see this article which happens to be about Facebook but others, Google, Apple have been accused of similar practices.

There’s no end to it :roll:

I have facebook apps on my phone and I cannot remove them, nor disable them and they constantly run and pull background data despite being entirely restricted on the rare moment when I have data turned on. I have location services off, and I’ve never used nor logged into facebook from a mobile device and it still eats more data than I do using chrome.

I totally despise this always on-line existence, and even Windows 7 grinds my gears.

I have never used Facebook or any other similar “social medium” but, of course, I am aware that I have no or little privacy on the Internet. Even using forums, such as this one, is a potential breach of privacy.

There is one recent installation on my computers, which scares the pants off me. This is WeatherFlow which constantly monitors what is going on at my end. It informs me when I close it down or practically do anything to the weather system. There is apparently a constant two-way exchange of data and “they” in Florida can even make programming changes on my computers, unbeknownst to me. Users’ weather data is there for anyone to see, including their battery voltage and ID code under some circumstances. As the system uses Android and Windows, I have little confidence in the privacy of the system. I am seriously thinking of ditching WeatherFlow, which is not adding much to my conventional weather systems, Davis and Oregon. I am not really happy with its performance on rainfall and wind speed, both of which can interact and lose accuracy under some circumstances.

Rather than complaining in this forum (with very few WeatherFlow weather station owners/users), why do you not have a look at the ‘Privacy Policy for Smart Weather’ (WeatherFlow) web pages, or contact directly the people at ‘WeatherFlow’ (in Florida USA), or post your apprehensions/doubts/misgivings/qualms/queries/reservations/second thoughts/uncertainties on the ‘WeatherFlow Community’ (forums) - at least, you would get some comments and replies from knowledgeable WeatherFlow owners/users! :roll:

Well, posting a message in the ‘WeatherFlow Community’ (forums) would more likely provide you with quite a few serious buyers. :frowning: