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Of all the many apps you can download, weather apps are likely among the most useful. Confer with a weather app and you can make plans way ahead of time (while ensuring those suede boots you want to wear don’t get ruined). But some weather apps have found themselves in the spotlight recently for less-than-ideal reasons.
This is the one weather app that’s wasting data even when you aren’t using it.
All weather apps are not created equal. Some are downright amazing and amazingly accurate. Others are beautifully designed and a pleasure to check. And some third-party weather apps could be doing this one suspicious thing that may make you want to think twice about using them.
According to Vice, it was discovered that certain third-party weather apps (popular ones!) were selling users’ location data to third parties, even when the user wasn’t actively using the app.
In a 2019 article, Vice reported: “Accuweather was caught in 2017 selling user location data to third parties even when users had location data turned off. Late last year, the New York Times found that both the WeatherBug app and the Weather Channel app were sending precise location data to third parties. Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal reported that a popular app on the Google Play Store called “Weather Forecast—World Weather Accurate Radar” collects location data, email address, and phone IMEI identification numbers, while also attempting to secretly subscribe users to paid virtual reality platforms.”
Unfortunately, selling user information is a major way that free and more affordable apps turn a profit.
Downloading third-party weather apps would make sense IF iOS and Android didn’t already come equipped with some pretty fantastic and accurate built-in weather apps of their own. The temptation to download cooler looking apps is real, but if you want to be sure your location data is not being used against your will, relying on your device’s built-in weather app is the safer way to go.
