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Comment by fma | Hacker News Reader

So, what's the best weather app to use that's not going to sell my location?

A browser, where it can't get that data expect by ip. At least it would be approx only and totally unrelated with a vpn.

Just don't give it access to your location. Not like I've widely sampled all of them, but Apple's weather app I do currently use does not require location services. I can simply tell it the zip code I care about knowing the weather for, which may or may not be where I am physically located at the time.

Your IP address may still be giving a fairly good idea of your location, especially if you're on wifi.

Apple bought a weather company for this purpose. So probably Apple’s honestly. Everything else needs to make money somehow while freely giving you data.

Apple bought Dark Sky, ostensibly in order to incorporate it into their Weather app. But, that app is the same or worse than it was before, so I can't recommend it. Dark Sky was excellent.

The Windy privacy policy seems decent.

https://account.windy.com/agreements/windy-privacy-policy

+1 for Windy! Note that there are two apps named Windy, one with a red icon and one with a blue icon. The one you linked to has a red icon and lists its developer as Windyty, SE.

The one with the blue icon has a site at Windy.app. Their privacy policy is much more hand-wavy, with lines about how they “don’t sell” but “share” your personal information:

https://windyapp.co/CustomMenuItems/26/en

One of the techniques they list explicitly is to use the Meta pixel for targeted advertising. I’m not aware of any way to remove geo data from, for example, the Meta pixel and the auctions it sells into. It suggests to me that perhaps they’re thinking of your geo data as incidental to placing targeted advertising.

A thermometer, a barometer and a radio.

heh. this reminds me that google just last week updated all their system apps (maps, calendar, clock) to include mandatory, no way to disable, weather. now they can phone home every time you look at the time or set up an alarm even under GDPR.

Wow. Never a better time to de-google a phone.

The default iOS weather app is safe to use.

My experience within the last year is that it's not accurate.

yr.no

iOS/Apple Watch has a built in weather app.

Buy an iPhone?

forecast.weather.gov in the US

The default one in the OS.

Why you need an app for the weather, what's wrong with websites?

More convenient, more location-accurate, can integrate with the OS like widgets.

What a terrible take. People like apps, we should make apps private I stead of telling people not to use apps. FWIW, websites can gain access to your location too, so plenty of people will still be tracked.

Mine gives me notifications before unpleasant weather events. A website can’t send me an alert saying that it’s about to start raining in 20 minutes.

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