Nobody saw that coming: while he thoroughly studied the operation of WebOS, the operating system based on Linux used in Palm Pre, Joey Hess noticed that the smartphone collects and it sends to Palm periodically a package containing several information.

Without the user’s consent.

The reports sent by the apparel to the manufacturer include a complete list of all of the applications installed in the apparel, by how long each program was used along the day and, the most preoccupying, the current coordinates of the apparel, obtained using integrated GPS.

This information, which is also sent to Palm, has a supposedly useful purpose: to help the company to purify and to improve the system, tracking conditions that cause bugs to affect the stability.
The private data are collected by a daemon (a program that turns in second plan) called “uploadd”, and for a program auxiliary called “contextupload”.

The Terms and Conditions of Use of Palm Pre, published in the site of Palm, makes clear that the company can collect of times in times information on the apparel. But doesn’t specified which information will be send.

In a reaction to the news, and never denying the statements of Hess, the company defended saying that the coordinates of GPS are collected to obtain better results for the user when this makes searches through Google Maps.

Via: Geek.