LA County Sues IBM's Weather Channel for User Location Tracking
- Los Angeles alleges IBM sells consumer data to hedge funds
- IBM CEO has criticized Google, Facebook for data practices
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The city of Los Angeles is suing International Business Machines Corp.’s Weather Channel unit, accusing the company of misleading consumers about how their location data was being used.
In a complaint filed Thursday in California state court, the city alleges IBM used detailed location data from users for targeted advertising and to identify consumer trends that might be useful to hedge funds, while at the same time telling consumers their location would only be used to localize weather forecasts. The suit doesn’t allege personally identifiable information was sold.