The city of Los Angeles sued the company behind The Weather Channel’s mobile application Thursday, seeking potentially millions of dollars in penalties for quietly mining and selling users’ geolocation data.
Filed in L.A. Superior Court, City Attorney Michael Feuer alleged in the 14-page complaint that TWC Product and Technology, LLC, a subsidiary of IBM that owns and operates The Weather Channel’s mobile app, violated California’s Unfair Competition Law by being “less than forthcoming” about the way it uses location data collected from the devices of its millions of users.
“For years, TWC as 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 sued to provide them with ’personalized local weather data, alerts and forecasts’,” Mr. Feuer wrote on behalf of the city. “TWC has then profited from that data, using it and monetizing it for purposes entirely unrelated to weather or the Weather Channel App.”
A representative for IBM dismissed the allegations when reached for comment, The New York Times first reported.
“The Weather Company has always been transparent with use of location data; the disclosures are fully appropriate, and we will defend them vigorously,” IBM spokesman Saswato Das told the newspaper.
Available for devices running both the Apple iOS and Google Android operating systems, The Weather Channel app boasted roughly 45 million monthly users as of December, making it one of the most popular apps of its kind among owners of smartphones and tablets.
The app informs users of how their data is handled, the lawsuit acknowledges, albeit buried within verbose and difficult to decipher “Privacy Settings” and “Privacy Policy” sections likely skipped by most users.
“On information and belief, the vast majority of users of the Weather Channel App do not read those sections, as TWC providers users no reason to believe that their location data will be used for anything other than personalized local weather data, alerts and forecasts,” the suit alleges.
“TWC intentionally obscures this information 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 city’s attorney wrote.
The lawsuit seeks an injunction stopping TCW from “deceiving users” into surrendering their sensitive data, as well as civil penalties of up to $2,500 for each violation of the Unfair Competition Law, potentially costing IBM millions up dollars pending the court’s decision, The Times reported.
IBM acquired The Weather Channel app and several other related digital properties under a 2016 deal with their parent company, The Weather Company. The Weather Channel, the company’s flagship television station, was not purchased as part of the deal.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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