Plaintiff’s Location-Based Privacy Claim Against BART Reporting App Fails
https://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2018/01/plaintiffs-location-based-privacy-claim-against-bart-reporting-app-fails.htm [blog.ericgoldman.org]
2018-02-02 04:27
BART, in cooperation with its police department and Elerts (a developer), created the “BART Watch” mobile application. The application allowed users to report suspicious activity by “sending pictures, text messages, and locations of suspicious people of activities.” However, the app periodically transmitted the user’s clientid and location information to the app’s servers. The app did not require a user to enter their mobile telephone number but left it optional. The app also had a mandatory click-through mechanism for contract formation. The terms mention location information sharing when a consumer filed a “report” but did not advise that the app allegedly tracked location information on a persistent basis: