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?

[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.

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!

--
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Re:Oh no! Automated Dr. Watson

[Sir_Lewk]

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

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.

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.