Palm Pre smartphones might be spying on their users,
according to a Debian Linux developer.
"I have been taking a closer look at the WebOS side of my Palm
Pre tonight, and I noticed that it periodically uploads information
to Palm," Joey Hess wrote in a
blog
post.
He gives lines of code intended to send Palm daily updates about
the GPS location of the user, what applications are used and for
how long.
The Palm Pre phones are also recording when applications crash
and taking a system state snapshot, wrote Joey Hess (pictured).
The device gives no indication that it is capturing or
forwarding this information. The only evidence is in the log files,
Hess told
The Register.
His biggest concern is about location information being sent to
Palm, which he considers both unnecessary and a large privacy
risk.
Palm said in a statement to The Register that its
privacy
policy includes very detailed language about potential
scenarios in which it might use customer information.
But Hess wrote in his blog that, although the document covers
Palm fairly well regarding all this, it does not make it clear what
data is being uploaded.
In a statement Palm said it offers users ways to turn data
collecting services on and off, but gave no details of how to do
it.