There have been recent concerns over user privacy on the Palm Pre. Although not available in the UK yet, Pre users in the US have reportedly been troubled to learn that the smartphone may be sending details about their location from the built-in GPS back to manufacturers Palm. Other information reportedly being sent back to the company included information about which applications were being used and for how long.
Palm have responded by saying that the information being sent back to the company is merely related to system crashes and is aimed at improving the quality of Palm Pre user experience. Claiming that they take customer privacy very seriously, they pointed out that the ‘data collecting services’ can be deactivated on the phone.
This news comes just weeks after reports that a network carrier in the United Arab Emirates had installed a spyware ‘software update’ to their customers BlackBerry devices. Research in Motion (RIM), manufacturers of the BlackBerry devices denied any knowledge of the update which sparked concerns that the state owned network provider had installed the patch as a means for reading user e-mails.
Palm however is not a state owned company and the most they would be likely to use the information for is marketing.
While some users of the Palm Pre are now concerned about their privacy amid the recent claims, others have pointed out that this data collecting is now standard practice on many modern smartphones and that users of the Palm Pre had in fact accepted these terms when they agreed to the phones EULA.
The recent uproar about Palm Pre privacy concerns may have come at a bad time for Palm who in recent month have seen sales of their phones drop.
Tags: Palm-Pre