Re: Palm Pre [openly and brazenly] reporting GPS locations, app usage to Palm?

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Ethan Ackerman <eackerma () u washington edu>
Date: August 12, 2009 5:26:07 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] Palm Pre [openly and brazenly] reporting GPS  
locations, app  usage to Palm?
Reply-To: eackerma () u washington edu

Greetings Dave, Lauren

I don't think you can call it "surreptitious" - Palm's privacy policy
comes right out and unequivocally says they collect and use it.
http://www.palm.com/us/company/privacy.html

"If you use services we provide through your Palm mobile device, we
will collect information relevant to providing the services and as you
designate. For example:
Location Based Services. When you use location based services, we will
collect, transmit, maintain, process, and use your location and usage
data (including both real time geographic information and information
that can be used to approximate location) in order to provide location
based and related services, and to enhance your device experience. "


This is just another failing of the location privacy regime in the
U.S.  Nearly the only entity who CAN'T collect and disclose the
location information is the actual phone service carrier - the
communications act at 47 USC 222 mostly restricts their
reuse/disclosure of location information.

The real interesting question in all this is, where does the Palm app.
get the location information from?  If the application gets any data
from the carrier (i.e. from a tower) - that's pretty clearly a
violation of the law by the carrier.
The words "that can be used to approximate location" in the privacy
policy sound to me a lot like tower-based triangulation. Maybe
(hopefully?) Palm gets the information directly from the on board gps
chip?

-Ethan




On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 4:50 PM, Dave Farber<dave () farber net> wrote:
> Begin forwarded message:
>
> From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren () vortex com>
> Date: August 12, 2009 12:27:06 PDT
> To: dave () farber net
> Subject: Palm Pre surreptitiously reporting GPS locations, app usage  
> to
> Palm?
>
>
> Dave,
>
> I have a report suggesting that the Palm Pre is "surreptitiously"
> sending GPS location data, app usage information, and perhaps other
> data to Palm servers.  I would appreciate it very much if interested
> Pre users would check out the report at: http://bit.ly/gNt9S and let
> me know if they can see similar effects (or not!)  E-mailed reports to
> lauren () vortex com or via Twitter @laurenweinstein are fine for this.
> Thanks.
>
> --Lauren--
> Lauren Weinstein
> lauren () vortex com
> Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800
> http://www.pfir.org/lauren
> Co-Founder, PFIR
>   - People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org
> Co-Founder, NNSquad
>   - Network Neutrality Squad - http://www.nnsquad.org
> Founder, GCTIP - Global Coalition
>   for Transparent Internet Performance - http://www.gctip.org
> Founder, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com
> Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
> Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
> Twitter: https://twitter.com/laurenweinstein
>
>
>
> Archives




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