Palm Pre privacy
by Volker Weber
Joey Hess reports:
I've been taking a closer look at the WebOS side of my Palm Pre tonight, and I noticed that it periodically uploads information to Palm, Inc.
I don't have a Pre to verify, but it sounds credible. What are they smoking at Palm, Inc.?
Comments
They are smoking "We know where your apartment lives", a very special brand. ;)
See: Palm Pre Reports Users Daily Actions and Location
Another's discussion/elaboration on this:
http://www.precentral.net/fyi-pre-reports-your-location-palm
I found it rather nice that that the Pre isn't locked down (prison-like), so that someone could dig this behaviour out without violating his terms-of-use.
This seems within the bounds of Palm's terms of agreement, and I found this part of Palm's response relevant:
The provision you’ve quoted explains why Palm might collect user information. For example, we collect and transmit users’ email addresses, email content, contact lists, etc. to provide WebOS services such as back-up and restore for the purpose of backing up that data and helping users restore the data if needed (in that case, it would not be limited to just the email address collected at registration). If users someday make purchases on their device through the Apps Catalog, then we would also collect payment information to process the transaction.
At all times, we’d be strictly bound by our privacy policy. Our privacy policy, like virtually all others in the industry, contemplate our using data to provide services users have requested, improve our products and services (hence the reference to Palm’s own “sales and marketing” in the privacy policy), troubleshoot, etc. We also refer to affiliates because Palm is a global company, and we may need to transmit data from our European subsidiary to the parent company. We’re obviously not a conglomerate with many different subs and affiliates, but the terms specifically mention subs and affiliates so that we can comply with European data protection laws that require us to spell out that data collected by a European sub can be transmitted to another part of the company.
