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A24 TECHNOLOGY
Monday 7 January 2019

Weather Channel app accused of selling users’ personal data

By BRIAN MELLEY want to sacrifice to that fraudulent” and seeks pen-
Associated Press company that information, alties of up to $2,500 for
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Peo- you sure ought to be doing each violation.
ple relied on the most pop- it with clear advanced no- It comes as companies,
ular mobile weather app to tice of what’s at stake.” most notably Facebook
make plans and figure out A spokesman for IBM Corp., and Google, are increas-
how to dress for the ele- which owns the app, said ingly under fire for how
ments, but its owners used it has always been clear they use people’s person-
it to track their every step about the use of location al data. Both companies
and profit off that informa- data collected from users faced congressional hear-
tion, Los Angeles prosecu- and will vigorously defend ings last year on privacy
tors said Friday. its “fully appropriate” dis- issues, which are likely to
The operator of The Weath- closures. remain on lawmakers and
er Channel mobile app Marketed as the “world’s regulators’ minds both na-
misled users who agreed most downloaded weather tionally and in California.
to share their location in- app,” The Weather Chan- In June, California lawmak-
formation in exchange for nel app claims it has ap- ers approved what experts
personalized forecasts and proximately 45 million users are calling the country’s
alerts, and they instead a month, the lawsuit said. most far-reaching law to
unwittingly surrendered Feuer said operators of the give people more control
personal privacy when the app, TWC Product and over their personal data
company sold their data to Technology LLC, sold data online. That law doesn’t
third parties, City Attorney to at least a dozen web- take effect until next year.
Michael Feuer said. sites for targeted ads and Feuer said he hopes the
Feuer sued the app’s oper- to hedge funds that used case inspires other lawsuits
ator in Los Angeles County the information to analyze and legislation to curb da-
Superior Court to stop the consumer behavior. Feuer ta-sharing practices.
practice. He said 80 per- said he learned about the IBM bought the app along
cent of users agreed to A mobile phone with The Weather Channel app location sale of the private data with the digital assets of The
it because the company preference page is seen Friday, Jan. 4, 2019. Associated Press from an article in The New Weather Company in 2015
had intentionally obscured York Times. for $2 billion but did not ac-
disclosures on how it uses “Think how Orwellian it feels ing potentially every place The lawsuit seeks to stop quire The Weather Channel
geolocation data within a to live in a world where a you go, every minute of ev- the company from the seen on TV, which is owned
10,000-word privacy policy. private company is track- ery day,” Feuer said. “If you practice it calls “unfair and by another company.q

For Ghana e-waste recyclers, a safer option amid toxic fumes

By NEIL SHAW a slow process and the peo- recycling training center
Associated Press ple we are dealing with, for due to open there in early
ACCRA, Ghana (AP) — On want of a better word, they 2019. For professor Julius
any given day, plumes of are sometimes difficult to Fobil with the University of
noxious smoke rise above accept change,” Nana Ghana, more community
the Agbogbloshie dump Akuffo said. “So it’s been a participation from the start
site in Ghana’s capital, slow and gradual process.” would make a project like
Accra. The billowing black The Environmental Protec- Green Advocacy Ghana
smoke comes from the tion Agency is Ghana’s more effective. Environ-
many informal e-waste re- main environmental regu- mental literacy among the
cyclers who take unwant- lator. “The law prohibits informal workers “is current-
ed electronics, strip them open burning of waste, in ly very low,” he said.
of their cables and burn any form or shape. This in- Fobil is concluding a long-
away the protective cov- cludes electronic waste,” term study of the health ef-
ers to reach the valuable In this Nov. 26, 2018, photo, a man uses a wire-stripping machine Principal Program Officer fects on e-waste recyclers
copper beneath. to get to the copper and other metals in discarded electronic Larry Kotoe said. at Agbogbloshie. He car-
It’s a dangerous way to cables in Accra, Ghana. “Having said that, we are ried out blood and urine
make a living, but an easily Associated Press not saying the e-waste tests on a group of e-waste
available one for the many Ghana. After too many metal, electrical cables are recyclers shouldn’t burn workers between 2016 and
unskilled workers arriving lungfuls of the acrid air, fed through blades that slit but rather that this pre- 2018.
in search of money to get he decided to change his open the plastic, making it dominantly informal sec- They “tend to have diffi-
by. Ghana imports about approach. “When I used easy to reach the copper tor should be transformed. culties breathing,” he said.
150,000 tons of second- to burn these cables, I felt or other metal wires inside. The law is seeking to rebuild “Ailments range from minor
hand electronics a year, ill,” he said. “That’s why I “When I strip cables here, their capacity, retool them, coughs to complicated
according to a 2011 study stopped burning and start- it looks much better than so that they can safely dis- health problems like COPD.
coordinated under the Ba- ed bringing cables in here.” burnt copper, and we’ll mantle e-waste.” That’s chronic obstructive
sel Convention, a global He stood at a wire-strip- get higher prices for this While only Green Advoca- pulmonary diseases. We
treaty on hazardous waste. ping machine at Green stripped copper” Idris said. cy Ghana is currently ac- are also seeing that some
Like many of the informal Advocacy Ghana, a non- Bennett Nana Akuffo has tive on the ground in the of them are susceptible
e-waste recyclers pick- governmental organiza- run Green Advocacy Gha- Agbogbloshie dump, the to long-term exposure like
ing through the trash that tion that operates inside na for more than three German government in the increase of cancers —
comes largely from Europe the Agbogbloshie dump. years. “Every month, every partnership with Ghana’s cancer due to exposure
and North America, Amin For a fee ranging from 2 to year, we keep on getting government is building a to some of these complex
Idris comes from northern 10 U.S. cents per pound of more and more people. It’s health clinic and e-waste chemicals.”q