MoviePass CEO Says He Was Kidding, Company Is Not Tracking Your Location [Update]
Update: In an interview withWired, MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe says he was just joking about the notion of the company tracking its users' locations. “I was just being in a funny mood and just said it sarcastically. We are not tracking people.” But this official statement from the company seems to tell a different story:
That reads as if they actuallyweretracking users (beyond a one-time check to confirm you’re in range of a theater when you try to buy a ticket), but they’ve now removed some of that functionality. The drama continues. Our original article follows.
A day afterMoviePassannounced that it would be taking steps toimprove its customer service, the ticket-buying subscription service is here to remind you that it’s still a little sketchy.
MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe reportedly boasted that the app has been collecting data about its users' locations before and after they enter a movie theater. Yes, that app you’re using to get free movie tickets is watching you.
“We know all about you,” Lowe said at a keynote at the Entertainment Finance Forum in Hollywood,Media Play Newsreported. Now, I wasn’t exactly there, but that sounds more than a little ominous.
“We get an enormous amount of information,” Lowe continued. “We watch how you drive from home to the movies. We watch where you go afterwards.”
It is true that MoviePass taps into your location service as a part of the check-in process. But we all assumed that the GPS function would cease once you close the app. Instead, it seems that Lowe has confirmed that the MoviePass app tracks your location for a significant amount of time outside of the movie theater.
We’ve reported before that MoviePass has been collecting user data with theintent of possibly selling it off. This is not an uncommon practice with big companies — there’s awhole legally questionable marketbased on selling data to advertising companies. It’s how you get personalized ads whenever you open Facebook.
But the revelation that MoviePass is adding GPS locations to those user data packages raises pivotal questions of privacy. In a statement to clear up these questions, MoviePass released a statement explaining that they are only “exploring” location data, but won’t sell it:
