In a lawsuit filed on Thursday on behalf of Californians, the City of Los Angeles alleged that the operator of The Weather Channel’s mobile phone application has been “covertly mining the private data of users and selling the information to third parties, including advertisers.”
The complaint states that users were led to believe that their data would only be used to provide them with personalized local weather data, alerts, and forecasts, but that the app has actually been tracking details about its users’ locations throughout the day and night.
Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer stated that The Weather Channel was elevating corporate profits over users’ privacy and that his office was acting to stop the deceit. The suit alleges that The Weather Channel has profited from the collected user data and monetized it for purposes unrelated to weather or the app.
The complaint asks that The Weather Channel be stopped from “engaging in the unfair and fraudulent business acts and practices” and be assessed civil penalties.
Additional Reading
Weather Channel app sued over alleged mining of users’ data, CNN, January 5, 2019
Photo credit: Sharaf Maksumov / Shutterstock.com
