Google Privacy Invasion alert! Google uses GeoIP to serve location-based content to you!
Palm Pre Privacy Invasion
21–27 of 27 posts
Re: Palm Pre Privacy Invasion
#22So basically there are two things. Sending usage data and GPS location. The first is not a big deal and most people are ok with that, but...
How can ANYONE be ok with sending their GPS location?
Re: Palm Pre Privacy Invasion
#23So basically there are two things. Sending usage data and GPS location. The first is not a big deal and most people are ok with that, but... How can ANYONE be ok with sending their GPS location?
I understand the concern, but you do realize that Sprint could already grab your location from the cell tower ID if they were so inclined?
(Not to mention every page you visit in the browser...)
Re: Palm Pre Privacy Invasion
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not that they can't pull the information from the towers, it's that the information isn't very good. If you have a real GPS fix and you upload that fix to Google along with the tower, they can start building a very accurate map of where what towers/APs are where. Then when somebody comes along that doesn't have a GPS fix, they can get a better fix than they could otherwise.
> it's that the information isn't very good. 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.
A few meters is the absolute best case.
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.
Re: Palm Pre Privacy Invasion
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.…
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
#26To be honest I'm not really sure what the fuss is about. 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.
if there was a way to make it so that the cell provider didn't know where I was, I'd want that too.
Re: Palm Pre Privacy Invasion
#27I 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…
Just like how AOL was collecting statistics and decided to release them "anonymously". But that didn't work out so well.
Don't you trust our mother corporations?