"I'm shocked that GPS location info is apparently being sent to Palm on a daily basis," Hess told The Register. "It seems both unnecessary and a large privacy risk." The Register went on to contact Palm about the issue and received a statement.
"Our privacy policy is like many policies in the industry and includes very detailed language about potential scenarios in which we might use a customer’s information, all toward a goal of offering a great user experience. For instance, when location based services are used, we collect their information to give them relevant local results in Google Maps. We appreciate the trust that users give us with their information, and have no intention to violate that trust."
However, Palm's privacy policy is not fully clear on why it needs to collect such specific data from users. "As a software engineer," Hess added, "I can understand why Palm's engineers would be interested in the crash data, but the data gathered during a crash includes potentially private information, such as a list of all the programs running on the phone. Also, it is much more respectful of the user to ask before sending such crash data."
Written by: James Delahunty @ 13 Aug 2009 12:31
