Much Ado About Nothing Pre Reading Activities

The Palm Pre has made headlines this week subsequently a mobile programmer discovered that his Pre was gathering data and 'phoning home' to report details regarding his location, the applications he used, and more. Whatever implication that privacy is being violated is well-nigh guaranteed to spark a passionate response from users, and this Palm Pre story is no exception. The matter is that this 'violation' of privacy is non unique to the Pre and is also more or less standard operating procedure for many technologies today.

Palm responded to the public furor by pointing out that users agreed to permit Palm collect the information in question equally a role of accepting the Palm EULA (end-user license agreement) and accepting the terms of Palm'south Privacy Policy. The policy conspicuously states:

When yous employ location based services, we will collect, transmit, maintain, process, and use your location and usage information (including both existent time geographic information and information that can be used to approximate location) in guild to provide location based and related services, and to enhance your device experience.

That is only one example. Throughout the Palm Privacy Policy there are other statements that clearly explicate that Palm will collect data nether certain circumstances. If you need to troubleshoot or run diagnostics that data volition be transmitted to Palm for analysis. If you backup your data your contacts, calendar and other information volition be transmitted to Palm.

So, the ominous discovery that Palm is 'spying' on its users is really nothing more than 1 user finding out the hard way merely what was in that Privacy Policy he agreed to without reading it. Nobody is property a gun to anyone's head to forcefulness them to take the terms of the Privacy Policy, and Palm has reiterated that it provides users the ability to disable or opt-out of these services as well.

At that place is a larger issue here as well though. The backlash implies that users were genuinely surprised and offended that Palm might be able to determine where they are at any given moment, or how they utilize their mobile device. Apparently users consider that to be a heinous violation of privacy. What these users fail to realize is that this blazon of data is gathered constantly in almost every interaction or transaction they are involved in.

The larger issue of privacy has been addressed in books such as Database Nation by Simson Garfinkel, or Beyond Fear by Bruce Schneier. When you fill up your car up with gas and pay with your credit or debit menu it provides information- someone can plant exactly where you were at that given fourth dimension of twenty-four hours. If y'all purchase a bag of Doritos and a Coke, that data is also collected. When yous place a call from your cell phone information is stored regarding which cell your telephone is in at that fourth dimension- more or less pinpointing your general location at that time.

With devices like the Palm Pre or the Apple tree iPhone and whatever number of other mobile devices the types and amount of data being nerveless can exist much greater. Apps that aid you find your machine have to somehow pinpoint the location of your vehicle and your electric current location in club to connect the dots and return you to your vehicle. Apps that assistance yous observe the nearest ATM have to determine where you are and compare it against the database of known ATM's in order to directly you lot to the nearest one. It is non a 'violation of privacy', it is a tradeoff accepted by users in exchange for tools and utilities that help make their lives easier.

I am not trying to scare people or spread FUD (fearfulness, dubiety, and doubt) regarding the employ of engineering. Quite the reverse. I am pointing out- good, bad, or indifferent- that privacy is more or less a thing of the past. You should read the EULA and privacy policy earlier you agree to them, and you lot should exist enlightened of how your information is being used and what your options are for controlling admission to your data, merely ultimately the only style to achieve complete privacy is to shun technology completely and live a Luddite existence in a motel in the Rockies somewhere.

Tony Bradley is an information security and unified communications expert with more than a decade of enterprise Information technology experience. He tweets as @PCSecurityNews and provides tips, advice and reviews on information security and unified communications technologies on his site at tonybradley.com.

reyespeireggived.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/170159/pre_spying_much_ado_about_nothing.html

Share this post