US developer Joey Hess analysed the Palm Pre's coding and found that handsets report back to the company's HQ every day with information such as the user's location, app crash logs, which apps are installed and how often they are used.
Bloggers have highlighted the potential threat to privacy, while also pointing out that a certain amount of information has to be shared with Palm to allow functionality.
Dieter Bohn, on Palm Pre user community site precentral.net, which says it is not linked to Palm, said: "This sharing issue is complicated, as Palm needs to be able to gather information just to make Synergy work, and they need [to] share information with entities that to us look just like Palm but in corporate terms may not be."
Palm's privacy policy states that the company can share information with "Palm affiliates and subsidiaries to support business operations and sales, marketing, and customer support processes … third party service providers and suppliers acting on our behalf to provide products or services to [the customer] … and to other third parties for purposes [the customer has] allowed".
The company issued a statement yesterday, saying: "Palm takes privacy very seriously, and offers users ways to turn data collecting services on and off.
"Our privacy policy is like many policies in the industry and includes very detailed language about potential scenarios in which we might use a customer's information, all toward a goal of offering a great user experience.
"For instance, when location-based services are used, we collect their information to give them relevant local results in Google Maps.
"We appreciate the trust that users give us with their information, and have no intention to violate that trust."
Geoff Blaber, an analyst with communications sector consultancy CCS Insight, told the Daily Telegraph: "The growth of location-based services and applications requiring a connection with third-party servers means a further rise in high profile privacy concerns is inevitable."
The Palm Pre launched in the US in June and is expected to go on the UK market later this year.
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