This scary news was discovered recently by a software developer, as the story is noted on the PreThinking states that the most recently released phone from Palm (the Palm Pre) was found to be sending somewhat critical information back to Palm. As we move into an environment where more and more of our mobile devices are becoming smarter we are generally aware that these devices may be more susceptible to nasties like viruses and malicious activity. Little do we expect that we will be spied on by the manufacturer of the product we are using.

The palm device has been gathering data such as GPS information from throughout the day, apps being used, time the apps are used for and what apps are actually on the device. This information has been sent back from the device to Palm over the mobile internet capabilities of the phone.

For a lot of the time this information may already be known by the phone company as they could presumably figure out your location based on what mobile towers your phone is using, but the negative thing about the whole situation is that the actual manufacturer of your device knows all of this information as well. Information like where you live, places you regularly visit, where you work thats scary stuff considering the manufacturers of other items you use don’t have access to this – imagine your fridge telling its maker where it lives!?!?

On the plus side, there have been no reports of any activity like this on smart-phones such as the iPhone, Blackberry or Google phones here in Australia. So for the time being we can rest assured that our info is still safe as the new Palm device isn’t available here yet.

All consumers of tech products should be quietly thanking all of the smart ‘geeks’ out there who notice things like this, they are the ones with the knowledge to notice these activities and make it known to the wider community. Lets hope they keep up the good work – for our sake