Palm Pre Privacy Invasion
kitenet.net
kitenet.net
There is no personally identifying information (such as an ID, phone-number, account no etc) transmitted and it pales in comparison to what a phone company has access to, even before cross-referencing cell tower data with their own records.
That is the right way to do it.
Tower-based cell tracking (triangulation based) generally has the precision of several meters if not better. That's more than enough for building very accurate map. Though there's a chance Palm is not allowed to access this information without a warrant, which would explain why they are using alternative collection methods.
In a city, you've got to deal with buildings and structures. Outside a city, you often have to make do with fewer than 3 visible signals.
How can ANYONE be ok with sending their GPS location?
(Not to mention every page you visit in the browser...)
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.
On another note, does anyone know if it's actually hard to sniff cell data? Could a well-hacked phone go promiscuous?