Tim Hortons app violated laws in collection of ‘vast amounts’ of location data

Re:Tim Hortons app violated laws in collection of ‘vast amou... by elevaet on Wednesday June 01, 2022 @06:01PM (#31588713)

> Mobile orders get pushed to the front of the line, so instead of waiting in line you can place a mobile order and go grab it right away.

Interesting, so customers pay for queue priority with their location data. Except the problem is it's not a fully consentual agreement, customers aren't explicitly aware of the arrangement.

My apathetic side says we're entering a world where it's so inconvenient to have privacy that we'll probably not bother.

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Re:Tim Hortons app violated laws in collection of ‘vast amou... by frosted-flakes on Wednesday June 01, 2022 @06:58PM (#31589210)

Location data is not required to use the app. You can just select No at the permissions prompt.

For me, the only options are "Allow only while using the app", "Ask every time", and "Don't allow". Background tracking isn't even an option.

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Re:Tim Hortons app violated laws in collection of ‘vast amou... by stanmancan on Wednesday June 01, 2022 @08:42PM (#31589981)

It's always weird though on iOS; many times I've selected "Only while using the app" and then a day or two later I get a pop up that "{app} has used your location data 53 times in the last 24 hours" which never makes sense considering I never opened the app.

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Re:Tim Hortons app violated laws in collection of ‘vast amou... by ccouzens on Thursday June 02, 2022 @01:40AM (#31591728)

Is the prompt about the app requesting your permission using the API designed for that?

And is the counter about the app making background data requests? Any network request can be used to infer permissions from your IP address?

That IP addresses can be mapped to physical locations is unfortunate but usually the precision is bad (eg enough to know what town you're in, but not where in the town)

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