IBM-owned Weather Channel app agrees to change how it informs users about location-tracking practices and sale of personal data as part of a settlement with LA
Stefanie Dazio / Associated Press :
Context & Ripple Effects
This settlement closes an arc that opened with Los Angeles suing the Weather Channel app's owner in January 2019 over allegedly covert commercial use of location data. Notably, IBM kept monetizing location signals during the litigation — days later the company launched hyperlocal forecasts built on smartphone sensor data (unveiled mid-fight) — and later leaned into real-time COVID-19 tracking on the same app.
The resolution lands after the asset changed hands: IBM agreed in 2023 to sell the weather business, including Weather.com, to private equity firm Francisco Partners, so the disclosure obligations now attach to a product IBM bought in its 2016 Weather Co. acquisition but no longer owns.
First-order effects
- The Weather Channel app must change how it tells users about location-tracking practices and the sale of personal data, ending the LA suit without a trial verdict on whether the original practices were deceptive.
Second-order effects
- Francisco Partners inherits the app with settlement-shaped constraints on its core data asset, making disclosed-and-consented location data — rather than quietly sold signal — the basis of the weather business it bought.
Third-order effects
- A city attorney extracting disclosure changes from one of the largest weather apps sets a template other municipalities can replicate against data-monetizing apps, pushing location-data revenue models toward explicit permission or licensed, consented flows.
The trend: Municipal enforcement is converting covert location-data monetization into a disclosed, permission-bound practice — turning consumer location from a free input into a governed, licensable asset.