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MoviePass CEO Proudly Says App Tracks Your Location Before, After Movies (techcrunch.com)
MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe told an audience at a Hollywood event last Friday that the app tracks moviegoers' locations before and after each show they watch. "We get an enormous amount of information," Lowe said. "We watch how you drive from home to the movies. We watch where you go afterwards." His talk at the Entertainment Finance Forum was entitled "Data is the New Oil: How will MoviePass Monetize It?" TechCrunch reports: It's no secret that MoviePass is planning on making hay out of the data collected through its service. But what I imagined, and what I think most people imagined, was that it would be interesting next-generation data about ticket sales, movie browsing, A/B testing on promotions in the app and so on. I didn't imagine that the app would be tracking your location before you even left your home, and then follow you while you drive back or head out for a drink afterwards. Did you? It sure isn't in the company's privacy policy, which in relation to location tracking discloses only a "single request" when selecting a theater, which will "only be used as a means to develop, improve, and personalize the service." Which part of development requires them to track you before and after you see the movie? A MoviePass representative said in a statement to TechCrunch: "We are exploring utilizing location-based marketing as a way to help enhance the overall experience by creating more opportunities for our subscribers to enjoy all the various elements of a good movie night. We will not be selling the data that we gather. Rather, we will use it to better inform how to market potential customer benefits including discounts on transportation, coupons for nearby restaurants, and other similar opportunities."
At my age, my location before and after a movie is the urinal in the men's room. No tracking needed. Those extra large Dr Pepper's go right through you.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Say what now?
Not only does the ToS apparently lie about how frequently your location gets polled, but why would I expect tracking of my every movement because I subscribe to something? I don't expect my subscription to WoW to include tracking wherever I am at any given point in time.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
Make it interesting.
* Appear to be traveling 200 MPH after a Fast & Furious movie - only to come to an abrupt stop and cease communicating
* Teleport around the globe every time the transporter is used in a Star Trek movie.
* Spend 10 minutes at every massage parlor in town before AND after a movie.
* Make it appear that you drove several hundred miles and passed up many other theaters showing the same movie to get to the one where you watched it. Go home the same way.
* Make it appear you broke out of prison to see a movie and then returned back to your cell - bonus points if you follow sewer lines in and out of the prison.
Just whatever - use your imagination.
https://github.com/M66B/XPriva...
"We are exploring utilizing location-based marketing as a way to help enhance the overall experience..."
"We are exploring exciting new ways to rape the wallets of people stupid enough to give a corporate predator unfettered access to their personal lives.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
We were going to get MoviePass but now, no thanks! A shifty company like this hiding such information from customers shows us what to expect from them in the future. This is lying through omission. I warned my family members who I had purchased movie pass for and advised that they ditch the service.
How anyone can believe any kind of explanation / excuse or anything they say going forward is beyond me. Are you sure they aren't tracking your movements at other times?
Also, I hate the BS they are pulling with movie theatre companies, blacking out some titles in order to squeeze money out of them. This just gets passed onto customers (non-movieopass customers)
XPrivacy user here...and by 'user', I mean 'multi-time donor' and 'will not buy a phone unless I know it can run Xprivacy'.
Xprivacy is excellent, but users must be aware of what they're getting into. If you use it just to deny location data from downloaded apps, you're probably fine. If you decide to set it so apps are unconditionally denied calendar and contact data, again, you're probably fine. However, Xprivacy can get you into trouble. It's the first thing I install, primarily because I use it to deny system apps access to various forms of data as well. I also have it set to prompt for other sorts of data, especially internet - Swype doesn't get internet access at all, for example. If you set it to prompt you, it will give you a number of UAC-style prompts when you first start the app. If you apply Xprivacy to system apps, you *will* spend ten minutes after your next reboot allowing and denying permissions to things, and doing so without being careful can get you stuck in a boot loop...ask me how I know this.
It takes time and dedication to make Xprivacy stabilize, but it's also pretty impressive how well it also acts as a de facto alert system. It's amazing how much Facebook Messenger hates it, especially when I deny it access to my contacts...which is why I use a combination of the mobile website and Frost instead. Similarly, it's almost scary going through the log of denied things, to see exactly how many times my location was requested from things which clearly didn't need it.
All in all, Xprivacy is why I'm still on Android - it's the only mobile OS with a tool like it. It does, however, require dedication and a willingness to put up with a less-smooth phone experience, but that's the cost of liberty.
It's everything you wanted.
Tells you (or can) every time a program accesses a resource, and gives you the option of allowing it, or feeding it fake data.
Want every app to see an empty address book, no problem.
GPS at N 0.0, W 0.0? Easy!
Feed a randomized Google advertising id, IMEI, serial number, etc every time you run an app? That's one of the defaults:)
You can start our giving the app no permissions, and it will pop up a screen asking you to allow or deny everything it does.
It's fun to see how often apps try and pull shit, and stop it dead in it's tracks.
Also available for Android 6+
https://github.com/M66B/XPriva...
Cheers!
I didn't imagine that the app would be tracking your location before you even left your home, and then follow you while you drive back or head out for a drink afterwards. Did you?
Dude! Really? You first wrote for an outfit called 'TechCrunch' eleven years ago, yet this app's behaviour surprises you? Just how much time do you spend with your eyes closed and your fingers in your ears singing 'la-la-la'?
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
< Location Services MoviePass
-- -- -- --
Allow location access:
Never
While using the App [x]
Always
Fixed that for you...
When the moron published that fact and millions of users switched off location tracking for the app.
What are you smoking that makes you so unrealistically optimistic about those millions of users? Please tell me - I want some for those days when the blind acquiescence of my fellow citizens makes me want to stick a pencil in my eye.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
...you are too stupid to realize that Google, Apple, Microsoft, insert random company here, is doing it too. But you don't care...
Not "don't care" entirely, but willing to make the trade. I'm a FB user too. Having a handy platform for discussions with family and friends is valuable enough to me to volunteer some information. (FB is going to track you whether you're a user or not - I'm just making it one step simpler in exchange for utility.)
You seem very distressed by decisions that don't affect you. If somebody says, "I'll give you a cookie, but only if you tell me your favorite lunch spot," I may or may not go for the cookie. He could do ANYTHING with that piece of information. He could tell a marketer where I go in exchange for $$; he could target coupons trying to get me to combine my favorite meal with my movie-of-the-day; he could go there himself and make the wait 1 person longer. I may or may not care. The point of this is that I'm deciding what to do with my information. I'm not distributing info on you nor am I forcing you to disclose anything you don't want to.
Stupidity at a massive level affects the rest of us.
If by "stupidity" you mean "not treating personal info as holy" and by "affects us" you mean "doesn't affect us".
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
Why do companies like MoviePass, Google, Facebook make a big deal out of "never selling your data". Of course they're not going to sell it. They're going to rent out the ability to use it, it's far more profitable.
Frankly, I'm not sure who I'd be worried about them selling the data to. They're already the worst offenders of my privacy.
Your ad here. Ask me how!