Galaxy Indulge MicroSD Card Phones Home to MetroPCS

Posted 03/03/2011 at 4:07pm | by Ryan Whitwam

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Regional carrier MetroPCS managed to get its 4G LTE network up and running before Verizon, and now they are out the door with the first LTE smartphone. The Samsung Galaxy Indulge packs LTE data and a free copy of Iron Man 2 on the MicroSD card. How nice. Of course, that SD card is phoning home to the carrier, but what could go wrong?

This new "Intelligent" SanDisk SD card is designed to send usage statistics back to MetroPCS. Each time the card is accessed, it will contact the carrier to log the use with a content analytics server. The carrier says this will all be anonymous, but we imagine users will get the creeps should they learn their content consumption is being monitored at all.

MetroPCS says it will use the aggregated data to assess the effectiveness of their content tie-ins. We'd really like some details on what data is being transmitted, and how one could go about stopping it. It might be wise to just swap out that SD card to be safe; unless you really want to watch Iron Man 2 on your phone.