The app asks for permission to access fans’ microphones, but doesn’t tell you it’s SECRETLY RECORDING YOU!
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The filing also claims that the app – created to deliver scores, news, and other team information – even listens when operating in the background, and only stops when it is fully closed or the device is turned off. SCMagazine.com has reached out to each of the defendants for comment; the Warriors have declined to comment on the pending litigation, per team policy. Satchell is also suing the manufacturer of this technology, New York-based Signal360, as well as the app developer, Pittsburgh-based Yinzcam. The Warriors partnered with Signal360 in 2014 to integrate the company’s beacon technology into its fan app, according to the lawsuit. But the newer beacon technology, developed by Signal360, is said to use smartphone microphones to scan for beacons that send out unique audio signals. “Our technology does not intercept, store, transmit, or otherwise use any oral content for marketing purposes or for any other objective”, she says in an email to MediaPost.
It claims the Warriors’ app uses beacon technology, in which audio signals from beacons at Oracle Arena are picked up by smartphones to determine a user’s precise location in order to serve targeted ads.
Even after they won an NBA-record 73 games last regular season, many seem to think that the Golden State Warriors will easily be able to surpass that mark after staging the coup of the offseason by landing former MVP Kevin Durant.
Satchell, who says she downloaded the app in April and used it until July, alleges that the app overheard her private conversations. I would have thought that secret data mining was beyond the capabilities of a basketball team, but according to a class-action lawsuit, the Warriors official team app may have violated users’ privacy. The plaintiffs seek statutory damages of $100 per class member per day, or $10,000 per class member, whichever is greater, plus profits earned through the “unlawful conduct”. Satchell is represented by Stewart Pollock of Edelson PC in San Francisco.
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A Warriors spokesman declined to comment on the suit. Signal360’s website says that it also has an app for the University of MI football stadium.
