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Despite privacy outrage, AccuWeather still shares location data with ad firms
- lettergram 9y agoAlthough, I like their service - just uninstalled. Peace. Didn't even realize this was happening until this article. But seriously, we should consider enacting laws against this. For advertising purposes they shouldn't need anything more than a city location. Even then, there should be an option to turn it off.
- hex-m 9y agoEU GDPR: "Valid consent must be explicit for data collected and the purposes data is used for."
- Silhouette 9y agoBut the GDPR doesn't come into effect until May next year.
- rocky1138 9y agotheweathernetwork.ca has always had better results for me. On mobile you can save a bookmark to it on your home screen so it works just like an app. Open in Ghostery to block the ads and you're on your way.
- marksomnian 9y agoClassic corporate response. They're sorry because their analytics shows that brand sentiment will increase by x%, and they don't even need to mean it. Happy customer of Dark Sky here.
- teej 9y agoRecent convert to Dark Sky. Highly recommend it. One of those increasingly rare instances where you can pay upfront for quality software.
- RBerenguel 9y agoUnless you are outside the US or UK or don't want to create a new iTunes account tied to those places (if you happen to have a valid card or an iTunes gift card for these countries)
- Terretta 9y agohttps://darksky.net/ https://darksky.net/
- RBerenguel 9y agoA web is not the same experience as a real native application (specially since I can't use the web on my watch)
- dhritzkiv 9y agoAs someone in Canada who wasn't able to download DarkSky for iOS, I've found Weather Line provides many of the same features (including up-to-the-minute precipitation forecasts). It uses the DarkSky's API for its data.
- willstrafach 9y agoDark Sky actually addressed this topic recently with some additional information. Good read. https://blog.darksky.net/location-privacy/ https://blog.darksky.net/location-privacy/
- ausvisaissues 9y agoJust deleted AccuWeather. I am 100% convinced by the blog post -- but the DarkSky App is unfortunately not available outside USA. I really wish that the user could selectively switch on or off what permissions an app receives -- Instead of a blanket list of permissions at the install. For instance -- "lie to the App and give location obly within 100m".
- pishpash 9y agoMaybe this (noise added to data going to advertisers) should be required on phones, it's basically an enforced form of data privacy.
- Larrikin 9y agoiOS has always had this and android has had it since marshmallow.
- Veen 9y agoI'm not sure where you are, but the Dark Sky Weather app is available in the UK. I believe many other app use the Dark Sky api too, like Carrot Weather, which is quirky but quite good.
- tgb 9y agoThe problem was actually wifi information (which can be used to infer location) not location. What OS are you using that you can't choose permissions individually for an app? I forget which version of Android got that but it's at least a couple years old at this point. The other benefit being that it installs updates without having to ask for you permission, then when the app needs a permission, it asks you if you want to grant that permission. And you can go to Settings->Apps->[The App]->Permissions to enable/disable them individually later.
- gramakri 9y agoWorries me that the request is made with http and the screen cap has some items blacked out.
- willstrafach 9y agoThat was just to redact sensitive information.
- gramakri 9y agoOf course. I am worried that sensitive information is being sent via HTTP.
- willstrafach 9y agoOh for sure. This ad provider uses plaintext in other apps as well, definitely not good.
- ve55 9y agoIf as a user, these types of things anger you, please just stop using the product. These practices will continue to get worse as long as users put up with it.
- jacquesm 9y agoThen you might as well stop using your smartphone and all 3rd party apps on it. The vast majority contain SDKs which tattle your whereabouts, contacts and other interesting tidbits to advertising networks.
- ruslan_talpa 9y agoOr, you might as well start paying for the apps you use (like more than $1) :) The vast majority of FREE 3rd party apps have tracking SDK, that is an important distinction. I mean really, what did you expect, the developers of those apps giving them for free in exchange for nothing? (the fact that they hide this is another discussion)
- shostack 9y agoSerious question... Is there any data on usage of tracking for paid vs free apps? There are plenty of cookie onboarding vendors who will pay a monthly recurring CPM rate for mobile logins that they can match against and they do not require you to show ads. So if the majority of users are not privacy aware and would just accept whatever permissions are requested, what is the disincentive for a paid app to include these trackers and add a recurring revenue stream?
- jacquesm 9y agoNone, and quite a few do.
- shostack 9y agoI know, but do you happen to have any data to reference that actually breaks down the % who do vs. those who don't? Obviously that would be messy data, but I'm genuinely curious as to what the adoption rate is for those sorts of things. I actually don't know much about mobile app traffic analysis, so I'm not sure how easy that is to sniff.
- whitepoplar 9y agoThis might be a good time to share what is (in my opinion) the absolute best weather app for iOS: Hello Weather. It's minimal, functional, and beautifully designed.
- rosstex 9y agoYesterday, I uninstalled AccuWeather. This morning, I happily connected a game to Facebook to play with friends. Then I read this article. I'm such a hypocrite.
- throwaway2048 9y agoBeing a hypocrite dosent make you wrong, or your actions meaningless. After all everyone is responsible in at least a tiny way for most of societies systematic ills, but that dosent mean that speaking out, and acting out against them is stupid, pointless or self defeating.
- ineedasername 9y ago"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds"[1] Emphasis on the foolish: There's nothing inconsistent about selectively choosing which are "worth it". To go all one way or the other would be a foolish consistency. [1] Ralph Waldo Emerson, self-reliance
- Spooky23 9y agoWell, yeah. This is the company that lobbied hard to restrict release of public research (ie NOAA mapping data). Of course they are scum.
- qzervaas 9y agoMaybe there needs to be an extra level of compliance for apps that are straight-up. (Like PCI compliance) Opt-in, but you get a special badge on your App Store listing.
- notadoc 9y agoDeleting such an app seems like a reasonable solution. The iPhone has a built-in Weather app, why bother with another that is sharing location data?
- JustSomeNobody 9y agoI have avoided AccuWeather since they worked with Santorum in 2005 to try and avoid "competing" with the NWS.
- jasonkostempski 9y agoNo one ever needed the location feature of weather apps in the first place, we can't even travel fast enough for it to be worth the extra battery consumption. Put a link on your home screen to search "Weather <zip>" in a search engine you're not logged into and make sure your browser isn't sharing it's location. Go someplace new, type in the new zip or, if you don't know the zip, city. Staying for a while? Make a new link on your home screen.
- bandang 9y agobest option is to just learn to read metar/taf.
- fencepost 9y agoWhat I'm curious about is the best way to test this in other apps - the stock weather app on my phone pulls data from AccuWeather, but do they also have the problem features? Pretty sure I can monitor what IPs my phone is connecting to with some of the routers I have access to, monitoring the actual packet data itself is a bit more troublesome - and may not be useful if it's encrypted.
- edwhitesell 9y agoI really hope this helps drive privacy laws in the US to favor the consumer. Please share these articles with everyone you know.
- nerd7473 9y agoWhy can't we all use FOSS? Oh yeah, people are greedy...
- Too 9y agoUninstalling the horeshit is easy, trusting the replacement app is the next problem. Anyway, there is an easy fix. Both Android and IOS allows you to disable GPS permissions for specific apps. Just disable it and add your home town as favorite. 1. Weather reports aren't that local. 2. You rarely travel frequent enough that this becomes an inconvenience, and if you are traveling that frequent, you are more likely interested in the weather at your next destination rather than current location.
- tinus_hn 9y agoExcept this app notes the wifi hotspots you connect to so they can still track you if you turn off location permissions. I don't know why Apple haven't removed them from the App Store yet.
- on_and_off 9y agoSome apps check their permission at each start. I recently started dating a chinese gal and she insists we communicate through wechat. At this point, I must have at least 10 chat services on my phone, what's one more ? Unfortunately, it asks for many permissions at the first startup and checks them everytime. Also, it displays an annoying popup over the mic icon in order to make me give it that permission too .. I have just stopped using that app. Unfortunately this kind of issue never gets a lot of attention and I feel like I sound like a tinfoil conspirationist when I explain that I don't want to give my location and contact list to random companies.
- pavel_lishin 9y agoiOS or Android? On Android, if I tell an app "no" enough times (2?), the system UI offers me a checkbox: "never ask about this again". Although I suppose the app itself can show "please enable" messages outside of the system UI...
- on_and_off 9y agoI have not checked on iOS but I guess the app has the same behavior there since the 2 platforms privacy models are now pretty similar : At each startup (and also maybe at each screen display, I have not checked that far) the app checks its permissions. It first displays a full screen splash (already a big nono for a messaging app, these must load quickly) during that time. If it misses either contacts or localization it will ask for these. Since it checks each time, even if you accept at first and revoke afterward, it will still ask again the next time you use the app (and revoking permissions understandably restarts the app). Of course you can refuse them permanently but then the app will be stuck on that screen with a popup asking you to activate these permissions. So far, it is the only messaging app I have seen with such an aggressive approach to critical permissions. It can also be argued that the app does not need any of these to offer its core feature.
- sccxy 9y agoiOS and Android should offer location precision setting for each app. If GPS location is: [47.49233343443, 19.05412443234] Then it should offer to round it [47.5, 19.1] for some apps.
- danpalmer 9y agoAlternatively, the OS could allow you to set your city (or region/state/county perhaps) and just return this as the GPS location for certain apps. i.e. choosing London could return a fixed 51.5073509, -0.1277583 for all users who chose London.
- Buge 9y ago>the cost-per-mile metric for advertisers. So advertisers pay more the further I travel? Do they factor in MPG and gas prices?
- known 9y agoI prefer wttr.in
- redthrow 9y agoWhy not just search "weather city" on Duckduckgo and bookmark the page?