It appears that Palm is getting information that is being uploaded from the Palm Pre. This morning, developer Joey Hess publicly examined a portion of webOS code that reports information back to Palm in order to determine exactly what info the manufacturer is retrieving behind the scenes. He discovered that the Palm Pre handsets reports the following information back to Palm daily:
- Your location
- Which apps you’ve used and for how long
- Your app crash logs
- Which apps you have installed
The only thing that concerns me is reporting my current location. Seems like it definitely raises all kinds of issues surrounding ethics, disclosure, and privacy. Hess does have provide a detailed way of disabling this transfer of personal information, but it does require the use of linux. However, I am sure easier ways of disabling this "feature" will eventually surface soon.
So what do all the Palm Pre users think about this issue? Let us know by posting some comments to this article.
UPDATE - Palm issued the following statement:
"Palm takes privacy very seriously, and offers users ways to turn data collecting services on and off. Our privacy policy is like many policies in the industry and includes very detailed language about potential scenarios in which we might use a customer's information, all toward a goal of offering a great user experience. For instance, when location based services are used, we collect their information to give them relevant local results in Google Maps. We appreciate the trust that users give us with their information, and have no intention to violate that trust."
Of course Palm did not mention how users can opt out of this "feature" nor did they fully explain why they would want to know which applications users have downloaded and are running.
Source: PreCentral
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