On January 3, the city of Los Angeles accused TWC Product and
Technology, LLC ("TWC") (an International Business
Machines Corporation subsidiary) of violating millions of American
consumers' privacy. In the civil lawsuit, Los Angeles City
Attorney Michael Feuer alleged TWC misled users of its Weather
Channel app to turn on precise location tracking by suggesting,
according to the complaint, that the data would only be used to
provide local weather reports. Los Angeles contends that TWC failed
to alert consumers that geolocation data would be shared with third
parties for other purposes, including targeted advertising and
consumer behavior analysis.
The city acknowledged that the app's privacy policy
"vaguely" discloses that geolocation data may be
transmitted to third parties for various commercial purposes.
Nevertheless, the city asserted that consumers had no reason to
search for that disclosure because the app requests permission to
track precise location data
