Palm Pre Reports Your Location and Usage To Palm

AceJohnny writes "Joey Hess found that his Palm Pre was ratting on him. It turns out the Pre periodically uploads detailed information about the user to Palm, including the names of installed apps, application usage (and crashes), as well as GPS coordinates. This, of course, is without user consent or control. The only way he found to disable the uploads was to modify system files."

Comments

Did it not occur to PALM that this is BAD?

[masterlogan2000]

Did Palm not think that someone would figure this out? I wonder what kind of backlash there will be about this and how much more negative impact it will have on the Palm brand.

Re:Did it not occur to PALM that this is BAD?

[negRo_slim]

I wonder what kind of backlash there will be about this

Answer: Not Enough

Re:Did it not occur to PALM that this is BAD?

[mcgrew]

Answer: Not Enough

True. Likely there will be no repercussions whatever. Yet another example of an amoral corporation not giving a shit about their customers. Welcome to the 21st century.

Re:Did it not occur to PALM that this is BAD?

[XxtraLarGe]

True. Likely there will be no repercussions whatever. Yet another example of an amoral corporation not giving a shit about their customers. Welcome to the 21st century.

And that's different from other centuries how?

Re:Did it not occur to PALM that this is BAD?

[Jawn98685]

VP of Engineering: "Dude, they're going to find out, and they'll be pissed."
VP of Marketing: "This is going to be great. Think of all the things we could do with this information. Think of all the people we could sell that information to. The feature stays."

Re:Did it not occur to PALM that this is BAD?

[mcgrew]

And that's different from other centuries how?

In previous centuries, corporations had a more narrow base of customers. Today's world has the internet and a global economy that dwarfs previous centuries' world trade. The 21st century corporation has six billion potential customers, more than enough to care about one or a thousand.

Re:Did it not occur to PALM that this is BAD?

[rahlquist]

And are we sure that none of the other phones do this?

Re:Did it not occur to PALM that this is BAD?

[sgt_doom]

"Did Palm not think that someone would figure this out?"

Palm...Oh, that's the company that replaced all their American programmers with doods from India.

Guess not.....

Recommended sf reading: "Watermind" by M. M. Buckner

Re:Did it not occur to PALM that this is BAD?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Likely there will be no repercussions whatever.

Right. You'll whine and whine, but you'll keep right on buying the stuff.

You are totally right. I should just throw out my cellphone and not get a replacement. That'll show all those cellphone companies. It is not like I need it for my career or anything.

Seriously, the "if you don't hide in cave and not interact with society, you shouldn't be allowed to complain" argument doesn't fly with me. If not buying a product is not a practical option to push change, the formal regulation is needed.

On that note, we can see how well the "not buying" strategy works with groups like the RIAA.

Re:Did it not occur to PALM that this is BAD?

[drunkle j]

In fact, I just mentioned this article to a co-worker who was showing off his shiny new Pre to me late last week, which after using it for a few days and finding out contrary to what the clerk told him that he could in fact not sync with iTunes, He's clocking out now to return it to the store he bought it from and promised to be headed to Bestbuy to pick up an iPhone 3GS on the way back...

So wait.. your coworker was so mad that Palm wouldn't parry Apple's anti-competitive measures and Palm's collection of usage/GPS data, that he rushed out to sign a contract with the company at the center of the warrantless wiretapping debacle? The same company that, in response to hoards of customer complaints, pulled strings in congress to get an unconstitutional ex-post-facto law passed to prevent them from being criminally prosecuted for turning over every bit of customer data they could get their hands on to the feds? Yea, I can see how the average American consumer would make that choice.

Re:Did it not occur to PALM that this is BAD?

[Yvanhoe]

In the way that they know realtime where you were and what you just posted to Slashdot. 1984 is not only about tyranny, it is also about how invasive technology can make it.

Re:Did it not occur to PALM that this is BAD?

[Anonymous Coward]

an abacus can't modify its own state.

Re:Did it not occur to PALM that this is BAD?

[mysidia]

I'm sure Palm will be getting some records preservation orders from the FBI soon, and lots of information requests.

Since it's now known that they get this information sent to them about third parties, the information became discoverable by law enforcement.

When a third party possesses information about you, law enforcement can compel discovery much more easily than if you possessed it; the standard is lesser than probable cause required for a warrant.

If they own a palm pre... one national security letter.. gets the whitehouse all the juicy info they could possibly want about their political competition....

the fine print

[alain94040]

Let's see if you can find the trick in Palm's privacy policy:

Personal information is information directly identifiable to you, such as your name, address, email address, and phone number, as well as other non-public information associated with such information. Some examples of how we collect and use personal information include ... [ a list that sounds pretty safe and reasonable]

The operating word is Some examples: legally, they don't say that the list is exhaustive and that they don't collect information any other way. So the long list of nice looking collection is just a decoy!

--
FairSoftware.net -- iPhone dev jobs for geeks by geeks

Oh no! Automated Dr. Watson

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Yes, it is probably not the best idea to upload crash information without user consent, but seriously folks, it's crash data. It's a way for Palm to find bugs in the field that would have been undiscovered in the testing labs.

Google does this all the time. Oh sure, it happens on the server where you can't see it, but the bugs occur and they need some way to log them.

Re:Oh no! Automated Dr. Watson

[Sir_Lewk]

Yeah, because GPS coordinates are really relevant to crash data...

Re:Yea, and....

[Philip K Dickhead]

Please, can I have my pretty, shiny leash, please? It offers me so much Freedom!

Re:Yea, and....

[mcgrew]

My Motorola i776 is GPS-enabled, but when it was stolen, Boost Mobile said they couldn't use the feature to find my phone. Probably because they get a cut of the hundred bucks it cost me to replace it.

Slashdot Exercise Time!

[db32]

In the spirit of blaming Apple for Palm's misbehavior with their iTunes stunt please respond here with how this is also Apples fault.

Re:Where's the hyperbolic and inflammatory blurb?

[0xdeadbeef]

Where are the fanboys defending this stupidity? Oh, wait, it isn't an Apple product.

Re:Yea, and....

[DrLang21]

Isn't it great how the courts can ask Motorola where you are but you can't?

Settings to disable

[Late Adopter]

The initial setup asks you how want to use your location information, and the "Location Services" app lets you change this at any time. I'm looking at the options under that app now, all of which can be switched off:

• Auto Locate: Your location will be automatically provided to applications that request it.
• Use GPS: Improves accuracy but can impact battery life
• Geotag Photos: Stores the GPS coordinates of your location when you use the camera
• Background Data Collection: Allows Google to automatically collect anonymouse location data to improve the quality of location services.

Re:1984

[MozeeToby]

Hmmm, lets see how accurate 1984 is in this case:

An ultra-facist, ultra controlling government that...

1) Watches, analyzes, and controls your every move to identify possible revolutionaries.
2) Controls all commerce and businesses
3) Outlaws sex for pleasure (even with your spouse)
4) Convinces children to rat on their own parents.
5) Uses constant warefare, drugs, and pornography to subdue the masses
6) Re-writes history to suit its present needs
7) Tortures and/or kills anyone who resists it
8) Encourages (forces?) racism and nationalism to the point of incoherent rage in every citizen.

versus a private company that...

1) Retrieves information when your phone software crashes

Sorry, I'm just not seeing it.

Well, this sucks if your a Canadian

[Mr.Fork]

Canada's privacy laws disallows this, especially not notifying the user. As soon as it leaks out to the CRTC and the Privacy Commish, they may disallow this device for sale in Canada later this month.

But my god, what was Palm thinking? Disappointing.

Re:Well, this sucks if your a Canadian

[dude111]

i think you meant to say: Well, this sucks unless you're a Canadian"

Re:Well, this sucks if your a Canadian

[ceoyoyo]

THAT's the part you think sucks?

Personally, I'm glad we have a government that sees this kind of thing as a problem as opposed to an, uh, opportunity.

Re:Oh Noes!

[Oloryn]

Treos have practically never had wifi, what is up with that?

Probably that the cell companies would rather that you access the internet from your cell phone via their expensive cellular data plans than be able to get around that by using a nearby WiFi access point.

Hack it!

[spaceyhackerlady]

So why not hack the thing so it sends what you want it to send? Somewhere innocuous, somewhere whimsical, or just random locations. You could have fun with this.

"Yes, I really was at the North Pole yesterday. And in Paris the day before. Isn't air travel great!"

...laura

Re:Yea, and....

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably pedantic, but Motorola wouldn't know. It would be strictly the carriers.

Re:Yea, and....

[phoenix321]

They are dismantling our society, in case you didn't notice. Honest police work is punished when directed at lower and lowest-class OR upper and top-class people while nickel-and-diming of middle class is encouraged.

It's proles and untouchables vs. we the people.