Wading Through AccuWeather’s Bullshit Response
Found on Daring Fireball on Wednesday, 23 August 2017
AccuWeather issued a statement regarding the controversy over their app sending location-identifying information to a monetization firm.
The accusation is that their iOS app is collecting Wi-Fi router names and MAC addresses and sending them to servers that belong to Reveal Mobile, which in turn can easily be used to locate the user.
Reveal’s own description of their business is that they sell user location to retailers. Why else would be they be collecting router MAC addresses if not to use a reverse lookup to locate users?
Your daily reminder that you are the product that is being sold. The real question should be why the underlying OS has no simple controls to decide what can get out and what can't. Instead, people are getting dumbed down to sell them more efficiently.