Who uses WeatherBug Products and Data?

WeatherBug was developed with the purpose of delivering live local weather conditions, forecasts and life saving severe weather alerts from its exclusive network of WeatherBug Tracking Stations. Today, the mission remains the same. WeatherBug data is used by…

• Consumers: 19 million unique at-home and at-work visitors^* a month.
• Government: accessible to Homeland Security personnel for plume modeling in the event of a biological or chemical attack and by over 100 government agencies at the state and local level.
• Schools and School Districts: used in over 8,000 schools across the U.S. for teaching math, science and geography with real life data.
• Broadcasters: used by meteorologists at over 100 television broadcast stations like ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, WB and Telemundo, to bring “neighborhood” weather forecasts and conditions to communities every day.

Since its release nearly five years ago, WeatherBug is one of the top 10 Internet properties in daily reach^* with millions looking to their WeatherBug desktop application for live local weather conditions, forecasts and severe weather alerts. The WeatherBug service is available at Weatherbug.com as well as via our partners — NBC, CBS, ABC, FOX, WB and Telemundo television stations, Netscape, Logitech, HP/Compaq, and America Online — to name just a few.

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Why a Desktop Application for WeatherBug?

For WeatherBug, back in 2000, a desktop application was the right solution.  WeatherBug delivers life saving weather alerts to people in time for them to react, stay informed and stay safe.  For all severe weather, the “chirp” has become a warning. For many, this warning gives them time to pull kids in from outside, or sometimes simply plants, call a loved one, or prepare for whatever severe weather is heading their way.

A desktop application allows you to build a relationship with your audience.  All desktop applications serve a purpose of bringing valuable content to customers, pushing out pertinent information, and eliminating the time-consuming “search” aspect of the Web.  In this way, people are better able to stay informed of the world around them. 

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Are desktop applications Safe?

The frequency of Internet desktop applications has increased dramatically in the last five years in many categories, including instant messengers, weather applications, rich media players (e.g., Real Player and Windows Media Player), and so on. Many of these products are free, supported by advertising, and developed by trusted brands. Unfortunately, the frequency of Internet properties that are not trustworthy or forthright in their objectives has also increased in recent years. Because of this, protecting the rights and privacy of our consumer and business users has become a top priority at WeatherBug.

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Is WeatherBug Safe?

WeatherBug is a safe and secure desktop application that delivers live local weather and life saving alerts to millions of people a month. WeatherBug does not have, and never has had, the capability to track surfing habits or “spy” on its users.

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Why does WeatherBug have advertising?

It is the advertising sponsors that keep WeatherBug free. WeatherBug found a unique way to make an ad- supported application “relevant” to each user by allowing them to choose the type of advertising they see every day within the clearly specified limits of the WeatherBug advertising platform. In addition, an “ad-free” version of WeatherBug, called WeatherBug Plus, is available to users for only $19.95 a year. For this price, consumers get all the great features of the free application plus additional premium features in an ad-free environment.

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Isn't an application that serves ads “Adware?”

One of the big problems with the term “adware” is the lack of a standard definition. We believe that the proper definition of adware is any program that secretly gathers personal information through the Internet and relays it back to another computer, generally for advertising purposes. This is often accomplished by tracking information related to Internet browser usage or habits.

WeatherBug is not “Adware.” WeatherBug's is incapable of tracking the trends of its customers' Web use or deciphering anything on customers' local or hard drives. WeatherBug does not “snoop” on its users, nor does it have functionality to determine what users were doing, where they were before WeatherBug was opened or where they go after using WeatherBug.

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Does WeatherBug have constant “Open Access” to the Internet?

WeatherBug does not have constant “open” access to the Internet. WeatherBug does not act like a server in any way and does not accept Internet connections. WeatherBug regularly “polls” for weather information using the http protocol (tcp/ip port 80). In this way, the WeatherBug acts just like a Web browser in that it queries a Web server for data that it displays.

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What sort of bandwidth does WeatherBug require and will it slow my computer down?

WeatherBug had an independent laboratory test the WeatherBug application with regard to adware and spyware, bandwidth usage, resource utilization, and the uninstall process. Click on the following link to read the entire report. http://www.testpros.com/weatherbugcertificate1.htm

The following is taken from the report mentioned above…

“Traffic was monitored for 48 hours. The system under test was running WeatherBug 6.0 in background mode. An analysis of the traffic showed the average network bandwidth to be 10.2 bytes/sec. Traffic consisted of http Gets and Responses which occurred every 300 seconds (5 min). As noted below, clicking on the WeatherBug temperature icon to bring it to the foreground entails network activity, but the traffic is comparable to a browser request to the Yahoo home page. When some of the browser like features are used, like radar animation or Sky & Telescope, the network usage is exactly like that of a browser.”

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Is there anything left behind when “Uninstalling” WeatherBug?

When uninstalling older versions of WeatherBug a small file, MiniBug.dll was left behind. This is a download manager that is used in exactly the same way that Macromedia manages the download of Shockwave, and other software developers manage the downloading of their software. MiniBug.dll has absolutely no capabilities to display any advertisements and can be safely removed after WeatherBug is installed without affecting the WeatherBug application. In fact, in response to questions on this issue, we are making sure that this file gets removed automatically once the full WeatherBug has been installed so as to avoid user confusion.

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Does WeatherBug Have a Users Bill of Rights?

WeatherBug has defined one of the industry's first “Bill of Rights” for its millions of consumer and business users, and adheres to the strictest standards relating to clear and meaningful notice, informed consent and user control. The WeatherBug Bill of Rights can be found at: ( WeatherBug.com/BillofRights ).

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What does WeatherBug do to Protect User Rights?

WeatherBug works hard to protect the rights of consumer and business users and is a member of the Online Privacy Alliance (privacyalliance.org). In addition, checkyourcomputer.org, was launched earlier this year to help educate and protect consumers' online.

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