Palm Pre phones abode with drug user location data

Palm Pre users, take billet, your shiny new smartphone is espial on you… kinda. Palm (NSDQ: PALM) is collection all kinds of user behavior data from their US fleet of Palm Pre smartphones. How’s that, you ask? Well, there’s apparently a bit of code hidden within the Pre’s WebOS that instructs the handset to send Palm selective information on the smartphone’s location, app custom, app crashes and a list of apps installed. And, it happens on the daily! Your Palm Pre might not be spying on you outright, but sending location information backrest to the mothership is yard for warning device.

While we’re not all that upset at Palm for retention running of which WebOS apps we rich person installed, which apps we actually like to manipulation or app smash-reports, having our locating data tracked by Palm is a bit unnerving. Using locating data for LBS (locating based services) apps like Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Maps is ace matter, but it seems that Palm is going one measure further by keeping tabs on Palm Pre users’ location-data.

In fact, Palm’s Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions allow them to gathering such information for various uses. The information is used to help the customer overhaul procedure, to provide services to the drug user and for other purposes that the user has previously consented to. If you’re exploitation the Palm Pre right now, you’ve already agreed to these policies.

If you’re not comfortable with Palm’s tracking practices, you might wish to consider disabling any and all locating services on your Palm Pre. At the very least disabling GPS on your Palm Pre mightiness be a good approximation. But, that means you’ll be sacrificing location services like Google Maps.

Palm’s Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions.