Mitch Lowe, CEO of MoviePass, a service that allows subscribers to go to the movies anytime they want for a low monthly fee had to backtrack statements he made earlier this month at a conference in Los Angeles.
While speaking at that meeting, Lowe made a comment that just a little bit more than creeped out many subscribers.
“We get an enormous amount of information,” he told the audience. “We watch how you drive from home to the movies. We watch where you go afterwards.”
Now, he’s saying his app doesn’t follow you home from the movies.
“While speaking at a conference in Los Angeles, through a mix of exuberance about our future and joking around, I mischaracterized how MoviePass locates our members and I need to fix that,” Lowe said. “It has raised a lot of concerns and I understand why.”
The company said the MoviePass app currently uses standard location services capabilities on an opt-in basis. There are only two events that would prompt MoviePass to identify a member’s location. These include when a member requests to search for theaters nearby and when a member requests to check into a theater. Both events require both the app to be open and for the member to request the action.
“MoviePass does not track and has never tracked or collected data on the location of our members at any point when the app is not active,” he said. “In our recent update with Apple, we removed the background tracking capabilities. MoviePass does not use and has never used this feature.”
“Our goal at MoviePass has always been to encourage people to see more movies as they were meant to be seen — in the theater,” he added. “We want to make our service available at a price anyone can afford and everyone can enjoy. While we do create partnerships with theaters and studios in which we offer statistical data on ticket use and other trends, we never share our members’ identities or personal information or personal data with anyone.”
Lowe added, MoviePass takes its members’ privacy extremely seriously, and our current Terms of Use and Privacy Policy accurately state the ways in which we use data. If, in the future, MoviePass desires to expand how it uses data, we will amend our Privacy Policy and notify our members so that they will be afforded the opportunity to opt- in or opt- out of the MoviePass service. This is what our customers expect, what the law requires, and how we’ve always handled data. We want to assure everyone that we treat our members’ data with the utmost sensitivity. Your trust and enjoyment are the lifeblood of our service.
Lowe said customers who have further questions, can visit this FAQ page.
