Indeed. Collecting a "type of data" tells you almost nothing about what the company collecting it could do or is going to do with that data.
I think regulation around this idea may be most effective. Companies should have limits on what they can do with the data by default. If they want to use it for more, then they should not only offer a much greater degree of transparency but they should have to abide by much higher standards, too, similarly to how medical companies have to abide by much higher standards when collecting your information.
So if a company asks for location data just to use it for weather information, that could be obtained with a single click from the user. If the company intends to use that location data to allow advertisers to target you, then it should be made very clear to the user that this is what the purpose of collecting the data is. And they should need to do more than just click once on a button.
If the same company intends to give the data to electoral campaigns, then higher standards still should be imposed on that company.
The point is we need to start regulation the use of data, and not just what type of data can be collected.