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Fitness App Runkeeper Secretly Tracks Users At All Times, Sends Data to Advertisers (androidauthority.com)
An anonymous reader writes: FitnessKeeper, the company behind running app Runkeeper, is in hot water in Europe. The company has received a formal complaint from the Norwegian Consumer Council for breaching European data protection laws. But why? Runkeeper tracks its users' location at all times -- not just when the app is active -- and sends that data to advertisers. The NCC, a consumer rights watchdog, is conducting an investigation into 20 apps' terms and conditions to see if the apps do what their permissions say they do and to monitor data flows. Tinder has already been reported to the Norwegian data protection authority for similar breaches of privacy laws. The NCC's investigation into Runkeeper discovered that user location data is tracked around the clock and gets transmitted to a third party advertiser in the U.S. called Kiip.me.Finn Myrstad, the council's digital policy director, said: We checked the apps technically, to see the data flows and to see if the apps actually do what they say they do. Everyone understands that Runkeeper tracks users while they exercise, but to continue after the training has ended is not okay. Not only is it a breach of privacy laws, we are also convinced that users do not want to be tracked in this way, or for information to be shared with third party advertisers.
You can write whatever you want in your EULA, even with "user consent" (i.e. nobody reads those damn things, they're 20 pages long and requires you to be a lawyer to understand half of it) it cannot overrule the existing laws of the country.
Never met one that didn't tell the world when and where they ran.
How would you know? If you met a jogger who didn't tell you anything about their jogging then you wouldn't know it. You would just assume that they were non-joggers and your preconceived notions about joggers would remain untested.