14 DAY TRIAL // It seems that the newly released high-end Palm Pre is set to periodically send end-user data to Palm, as Joey Hess, a Debian developer, points out. According to him, the data sent to the handset maker includes GPS location, what applications are installed on the device, what apps are used and for how long, and crash logs. For what it's worth, it was somehow expected for the device to send data back to the company, mainly due to the fact that some of these pieces of information might help the company improve its services.
Even so, there might be some people who would find this a rather disturbing state of facts, and a possible violation of their privacy, especially since the Pre is reportedly sending all the info back to Palm on a daily basis. And particularly since Palm's Privacy Policy states clearly that the company might also share all the personal data it collects from users with third parties, though only with those affiliated with Palm, PreThinking notes.
Here is what the phone maker has to say in response to this, as reported by phonescoop: “Palm takes privacy very seriously, and offers users ways to turn data collecting services on and off. 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.”
We should also mention the fact that the Pre is not the only handset that sends info to the manufacturer or to the carrier. While operators are known to log some of the subscribers' actions while browsing the Internet, for example, as one user responds to Joey Hess' post, some of the applications that run on different devices do the same thing. Most often these details indeed help companies bring improvements to different aspects of their services, so it’s all for a good cause in the end.