Re:Palm Pre Privacy Invasion
by thenduks on Wednesday August 12, 2009 @04:12PM
(#759125)
I must say, I'm completely fine with this sort of thing. Doesn't bother me even slightly. I can't image what Palm could use this information for that I would not be OK with (although I'm sure there are examples), but the fact that they are pretty clearly using this as part of improving their software -- I'm all for it. I would, however, prefer it to be sent when it's connected to a computer or something since... well, don't waste my bandwidth :)
[ Parent
| on HN ]
> what Palm could use this information for that I would not be OK with
Let's try:
Random Palm employee gets a constant feed of your location == knows how soon you can be back home. He also knows you have enough money for gadgets like Pre, so you must have some valuable things at home... Easy burglary.
Yes - it might be a very unlikely scenario, but I'm pretty sure we could come up with a lot of others, more serious. If there is no real reason for them to have that data, they should not collect it: security 101 - close down everything, then enable things you need.
Re:Palm Pre Privacy Invasion
by lallysingh on Wednesday August 12, 2009 @07:56PM
(#759618)
More interesting: is the transmission encrypted? Secured in any way other than "it's hard to sniff cell data?"
On another note, does anyone know if it's actually hard to sniff cell data? Could a well-hacked phone go promiscuous?
Both CDMA and GSM phones use encryption by default. It's not the strongest or best implemented encryption, but it makes it pretty tough. GSM is pretty tricky to demodulate even without encryption.
Re:Palm Pre Privacy Invasion
by CGamesPlay on Wednesday August 12, 2009 @05:55PM
(#759380)
Just like how AOL was collecting statistics and decided to release them "anonymously". But that didn't work out so well.