According to a coder, webOS and the Palm Pre are reporting data about his usage of the device back to Palm. The information includes location, applications that have been downloaded, and how long those applications were used. PALM RESPONDS!I have contacted Palm and Sprint for an answer on this subject and have yet to receive a response. Until I do, this is what we know...

A blogger who uses a Palm Pre was poking around the code of his device and made some interesting discoveries. The Pre and its webOS send the GPS-derived location information of the Pre as well as every application that's been downloaded back to Palm every day! On top of that, it also sends reports about application crashes.

The blogger writes, "There is also some info that is recorded when a webOS app crashes. Now, I've seen webOS crash hard a time or two, but it turns out apps are crashing fairly frequently behind the scenes, and each such crash is logged and a system state snapshot taken. At least some of these are uploaded."

Now, a lot of Internet-based services (and, more and more frequently, hardware that is connected to networks) ask users to willingly send information about system crashes and other data back to the manufacturer for support and de-bugging purposes. This is true of Apple, Google, and many others. Palm and Sprint could very well have added a clause in the end user license agreement or whatever documentation is approved (though probably not read) by end users that grants permission for the Pre to send this type of data back to Palm.

That might be enough to cover Palm's tail here, but I think there need to be an opt-out capability. What's more, users should be told in no uncertain terms that their personal information is being sent to Palm, especially location data. That's a major intrusion, in my book -- one for which I hope Palm and Sprint have a good explanation.

We're waiting, Palm. What's the deal here?

Update:

Palm issued the following statement regarding end-user privacy:

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.

Palm didn't fully explain how end-users can opt out of these data-sharing service. Palm also failed to fully explain why it would want to collect information about which applications users have downloaded, are running, or how long users have those apps open. Last, Palm also didn't really say what it is doing with that location data. I understand why the network operator may need the information, and some third-party applications, but the coder specifically notes that the information is being sent back to Palm, not those third-parties.