AccuWeather iOS App Sends Location Data to Advertising Partner

[LASER_oneXM]

Will Strafach, an independent security researcher, has discovered over the weekend that the AccuWeather iOS app sends location information to a data monetization firm named Reveal Mobile.

On its website, the company touts the ability to "convert mobile location signals into high value audiences" and "generate more mobile revenue, with or without ads," for its customers.

Over the weekend, the researcher carried out more tests to verify the validity of his discovery.

"During a testing period of 36 hours, specifically while the AccuWeather application was not in the foreground, my test iPhone (located on a desk in an office building) sent [...] information to RevealMobile a total of 16 times, occurring roughly once every few hours," the researcher wrote today in a Medium blog post.

According to Strafach, the AccuWeather iOS app collects the following information:

Precise GPS coordinates, including current speed and altitude.
Name and BSSID of the Wi-Fi network the user is currently using.
Status of the device's Bluetooth connection (on or off).

Collected data can be used to infer user lifestyle preferences
The GPS coordinates are the most sought-after information, but they may not always be available, as users tend to disable location tracking most of the times.

For those instances, the Wi-Fi network information serves as a replacement. There are multiple services and databases currently available online that can convert Wi-Fi network names and SSIDs/BSSIDs into approximate geographical coordinates.

Based on Reveal Mobile's website, we can speculate that the company is mapping out each person's daily travels, collecting information about each user's favorite shops, malls, cafes, and others, data that can be used to deliver targeted ads, either by AccuWeather or any other advertiser.

 

[Marko :)]

That's exactly why I'm searching for the city manually in weather apps.

 

[Fritz]

Surprisingly, there's rarely a "free" product you don't end up paying for.

 

[Deletedmessiah]

No surprise at all!

 

[ispx]

The National Weather Service, which provides large amounts of the data that AccuWeather repackages and sells for profit, also provides that same information for free by placing it in the public domain.

On April 14, 2005, U.S. Senator Rick Santorum introduced the "National Weather Service Duties Act of 2005" in the U.S. Senate. The legislation would have forbidden the National Weather Service from providing any such information directly to the public, and the legislation was generally interpreted as an attempt by AccuWeather to profit off of taxpayer-funded weather research by forcing its delivery through private channels. The bill did not come up for a vote. Santorum received campaign contributions from AccuWeather's president, Joel Myers.

source : AccuWeather - Wikipedia

 

[Winter Soldier]

Of course no surprise, now AccuWeather is the subject of this article, but it is not the only one for sure by implementing these practices.

 

[Fritz]

Of course no surprise, now AccuWeather is the subject of this article, but it is not the only one for sure by implementing these practices.

Of course this isn't the only one, far from it. But it serves as a nice example-of-the-month™ for where we're headed as users if we're not on our toes. The undying attraction of any button with the word "free" on it is a good reason for constant reinforcement.

 

[Solarquest]

Unfortunately "free" is becoming more and more a synonym of "free to (be) spy(ed)" with little or no information to the user.

 

[Solarquest]

AccuWeather: Our app slurped your phone's location via Wi-Fi but we like totally didn't use it

 

[Fritz]

The other week I took some nudes of the AccuWeather CEO's wife. I will like totally not look at them, though, it's for documentation purposes only.