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SDRNews: I was Ready to Write Sprint Up

August 12th, 2009 Administrator

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I Was Ready to Write Sprint Up

by Andrew McCaskey
Until I Read the Fine Print

I was all fired up to write about how Sprint, and the Palm Pre were treading on dangerous ground – reporting on the location, calling habits and operation of their customers on the new Palm Pre.

The report was in a detailed blog entry from Joey Hess blog at Kitenet.net where he found that his Palm Pre was ratting on him. It turns out the Pre periodically uploads detailed information about the user to Palm, including the names of installed apps, application usage (and crashes), as well as GPS coordinates. This, of course, is without user consent or control. The only way he found to disable the uploads was to modify system files.”

Before you get up at arms, you might note – as one of the commenters to the post, who is also a Sprint customer, that ” Sprint already has a log of every web server I visit with my Pre via EVDO. Sprint already has a log of my gps track whenever I use google maps or sprint nav. Sprint already has a log of every email address I get email from or to. Sprint already has a log of every phone number I get or make a call to. Sprint already has a log of every sms message I get or make. Sprint has the ability to have a log of every cell tower I ping into. Sprint has the ability to read every email I send or receive.

What, exactly, is it that I’m risking in terms of my privacy that palm gets crash logs and usage time of apps again? ”

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