RSSHow to turn off Palm Pre's 'Big Brother' data collection
By Tim Conneally | Published August 13, 2009, 1:09 PM
Debian developer Joey Hess this week pulled the covers off of Palm's WebOS, and showed some interesting things going on in the background. Apparently, Palm Inc. collects daily samples of the user's location, which apps he has installed and his usage of them, and app crash logs.
As expected, many have panicked at the thought of both Sprint and Palm harvesting their usage data. But Palm appears to be working within the realm of its Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy, and the company's data-sharing policy has actually been a known issue since the Pre's release.
Palm and its subsidiaries, affiliates, partners, suppliers, and agents (collectively, Affiliates) may collect, store, access, disclose, transmit, process, and otherwise use your Registration Data, account or Device information, content, and technical data for Palm and its Affiliates to provide you with the Services, address your requests, provide technical support, process any transactions for your account, and otherwise in accordance with Palm's privacy policy. Palm may also provide or enable certain Services through your Device that rely upon location information. In order to provide such Services, Palm and its Affiliates may collect, store, access, disclose, transmit, process, and otherwise use your location data (including real time geographic information) in accordance with Palm's privacy policy. You also agree that Palm has the right, without liability to you, to disclose any information, including but not limited to your Registration Data and other information, to law enforcement authorities or government officials, to the extent Palm believes is reasonably necessary or appropriate.
To appease those quick to invoke big brother, Palm issued a statement which said, "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."
The main complaint for users now is that turning the data collection off is not simple or obvious enough. Hess said, "My approach to disable this, which may not stick across WebOS upgrades, was to comment out the 'exec' line in /etc/event.d/uploadd and reboot. However, then I noticed a contextupload process running. This is started by dbus, so the best way to disable it seems to be: rm /usr/bin/contextupload."
According to Palm, however, it's much easier than all that. Under Location Services, a user needs only to switch Background Data Collection to the "off" position and all this controversial location and app data will kept private.
The fortunate thing is that it really takes a behemoth like Microsoft or Google to pull off a dastardly scheme, and both Sprint and Palm have proven to be too inept to become evil empires at any level.
Score: -1
|I'm not connecting the dot's on the "OMG"Privacy thing here. Ok, so Palm and Sprint know what apps I've loaded, and what are most often used. Woopie - Oh, and let's not forget the complete invasion of knowing my location a time or two during the day.....WOW. The moron thing here, is EVERYONE want's convienience (spelled wrong) of high tech phones to do some many things like find the nearest store, or get directions to the doctors office, find the closest movie times and locations, but everyone here seems to forget SPRINT AND PALM DON'T READ YOUR %$@% MINDS!!
For me to have those, and other convienant things on my phone, OF COURSE I have to give up a little location and application error log thingys. If I were a criminal of some sort, yea, maybe others knowing where I was or what I'm doing might not be the best. If I were hiding from the FBI, I may not want that info getting out, but Sprint and Palm having this info, that in the end, well enhance my user expierience , I'm more than happy.
Does everyone forget, ALL CARRIERS know where you are at all times anyway? I'm sick and tired of reading posts by mindless sheep who usually know less than half the story. Everyone here forgets all the positive benifits of this subject, but the scared-sheep only can remember the neg ones, and the neg ones don't even make sense.
Power to Palm and to Sprint!!
Score: 1
|In england the gov has arrested people for driving by a protest. They were not going to the protest just driving by a near by street. Today not a big deal.. but someday yes it will be a big deal..
Oh ya BTW today the Iran gov is going thru phone records and arresting people that were protesting.. a month after the event..
Score: 0
|"But Palm appears to be working within the realm of its Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy"
That doesn't make it OK.
Just because Palm and Sprint say it is, doesn't mean it is.
Score: 0
|If Palm and Sprint's terms of service said they could remotely access all of your data on your Pre anytime they feel like it and do whatever they want with it this would be perfectly legal. If people still decided to buy the Pre despite this they would have no grounds for filing a lawsuit of any kind.
Score: 2
|Modded you up, GD. Exactly right.
Score: 0
|I hate all their double langage "we value your privacy and so we allow you to stop us for spying on you"... if they valued anything they would not in the fist place, and believe me it is useless, just a false business model of selling unproven facts and dubious "deductions" ...
big brother for the sake of big brother, the system running and running..
One "funny thing" is that YOU PAY for them sending data about you "home".... it is not like mobile connectivity was anything but cheap ...
They are all around stopping you to enjoy anything from them without paying but they have no trouble using your infrastructure and money to serve their supposed interests ...
Score: 0
|should be off by default IMO
Score: 0
|Now for more research: Does any other location-based PDA/Cell service do this with opt-in by default, versus opt-out by default?
From what I can tell it's pretty much opt-out.
Score: 0
|I have a better way of shut it off, just don't buy a Pre.
Score: -2
|let me guess, your a mindless-iPhone freak? Right?
Score: 0
|as a privacy caring people, I have that off when I first set up my Pre.
Score: 1
|This stuff is not a problem because ONLY the hardware\software vendor gets this data. right????!!1
google does not track people because they have a real biz other then knowing and recording what people do! Opps that is the biz model. sorry..
turn it off and are you sure it's off???
Score: 0
|