Los Angeles sues Weather Channel app over data collection

The city of Los Angeles is accusing The Weather Channel app of improperly mining detailed data from users about their daily habits and handing the information over to advertisers and hedge funds.

In a lawsuit filed Friday, L.A. City Attorney Mike Feuer accused the company that operates the app — TWC Product and Technology, a subsidiary of IBM — of misleading users about what it does with their precise geolocation data.

“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,'” Feuer writes in the lawsuit.

“TWC has then profited from that data, using it and monetizing it for purposes entirely unrelated to weather or the Weather Channel App,” the complaint continues.

The lawsuit was first reported by The New York Times.