Does the Palm Pre spy on you?

Posted on 13 Aug 2009 at 14:56

According to Palm Pre owner Joey Hess, his smartphone is sending private information back to Palm HQ.

Writing in his blog he explains how his Pre uploads his current GPS location and how long he's been using an app for to a Palm server.

Hess claims that this data collection is covered by the company's privacy policy.

"Since Palm has lawyers, they have a privacy policy, which covers their ass fairly well regarding all this, without going into details or making clear that the above data is being uploaded," he wrote on his blog.

Palm has denied that this information is being collected for any nefarious purposed and told The Register that this information is sent "when location-based services are used, wecollect their information to give them relevant local results in Google Maps".

Palm also said that there was a way to turn off data collecting services, but has provided no details on how to do so.

In essence, there's nothing wrong with company's collecting data to provide a better user experience, but being warned about it upfront would be preferable.

Author: David Ludlow

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