LA Sues Weather Channel For Illegally Selling Private Data Of Mobile App Users
LA Sues Weather Channel For Illegally Selling Private
Data Of Mobile App Users
January 4, 2019 at 2:34 pm
LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) – The Los Angeles city attorney’s
office announced Friday that it has sued the parent company of the Weather
Channel, alleging that for years it has misleadingly and unlawfully collected
and sold the private data of its mobile app users.
In its lawsuit against Time Warner Cable, filed in L.A.
County Superior Court, the city attorney’s office claims that the company
tracks the exact location of its Weather Channel app users, and then sells that
private information to advertisers without its users’ knowledge.
“For years, TWC has deceptively used its Weather Channel
App to amass its users’ private, personal geolocation data — tracking minute
details about its users’ locations throughout the day and night, all the while
leading users to believe that their data will only be used to provide them with
‘personalized local weather data, alerts and forecasts,’” the complaint reads.
The data serves no weather-related purpose, but was only
collected in order to allow TWC to turn a profit, the complaint reads. The data
was sold to at least 12 third party websites over the past 19 months.
The Weather Channel app has about 45 million users,
according to the complaint.
TWC intentionally obscures this information” in a
10,000-word privacy policy “because it recognizes that many users would not
permit the Weather Channel App to track their geolocation if they knew the true
uses of that data,” the complaint goes on to say.
The lawsuit is seeking an injunction prohibiting TWC from
continuing to collect and sell the data, along with civil penalties of up to
$2,500 per violation.
”We allege TWC elevates corporate profits over users’
privacy, misleading them into allowing their movements to be tracked, 24/7,”
City Attorney Mike Feuer said. “We’re acting to stop this alleged deceit.”
A spokesperson for The Weather Company — which operates
the Weather Channel – provided CBS2 with the following statement:
“The Weather Company has always been transparent with use
of location data; the disclosures are fully appropriate, and we will defend
them vigorously.”
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