Windows 7: Google Street View snooped WiFi for personal data

Google has said that its world-roving Street View cars have been collecting information sent over open WiFi networks, contradicting previous assurances by the company.

This means that Google may have collected emails and other private information if they traveled over WiFi networks while one of the cars was in range. Previously, the company said no payload data was ever intercepted.

In a blog post published on Friday afternoon, the company said that it collected the data by "mistake" and that the data has not been used in any Google products. Street View cars have now been grounded, according to the post, and the company has promised to delete the data. But before doing so, it will be asking regulators in "the relevant countries" how this should be done.

Google declined to comment on the matter, instead pointing us back to its blog post. It arrives less than three weeks after the company said that such data was not being collected. But since then, Google conducted a review of the data being collected by its Street View cars after the data protection authority (DPA) in Hamburg, Germany requested such an audit.

Ginger McCall, a staff counsel with the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), a public watchdog, calls the data collection a "violation of customers' trust," and she questions Google's claim that it was collecting the data by mistake. "People need to ask why was Google was collecting this information," McCall told The Reg. "It's difficult to believe that this would be done accidentally.

"This really flies in the face of their assertion that customers should just trust them."

Does it come as any surprise? With Facebook using our data, twitter on the way google surely has every open hotspot in the US in its database.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin says the company "screwed up" when it equipped its world-roving Street View cars with software code that spent three years capturing personal data from open Wi-Fi networks.
"Let me just say: We screwed up," Brin told a room full of reporters this afternoon at the company's annual developer conference in San Francisco. "I'm not going to make excuses about this."

In a blog post on Friday, Google announced that contrary to previous assurances by the company, its Street View cars had been capturing payload data from open Wi-Fi networks as they sped around the globe snapping digital photos. Just a month earlier the company had said the cars were collecting only SSIDs and MAC addresses form Wi-Fi networks.

Google hit with class-action lawsuit over Wi-Fi snooping

Privacy violations could cost it $10,000 for each time it grabbed data from unprotected networks with its Google Street View vehicles

Google's secret Wi-Fi sniffing has prompted a class-action lawsuit that could force the company to pay up to $10,000 for each time it snatched data from unprotected hotspots, court documents show.

The lawsuit, which was filed by an Oregon woman and a Washington man in a Portland, Ore. federal court on Monday, accused Google of violating Federal privacy and data acquisition laws.

"When Google created its data collection systems on its GSV [Google Street View] vehicles, it included wireless packet sniffers that, in addition to collecting the user's unique or chosen Wi-Fi network name (SSID information), the unique number given to the user's hardware used to broadcast a user's Wi-Fi signal (MAC address, the GSV data collection systems also collected data consisting of all or part of any documents, e-mails, video, audio, and VoIP information being sent over the network by the user [payload data]," the lawsuit stated.

On Tuesday, the same plaintiffs filed a motion for a temporary restraining order to prevent Google from deleting the data, a move the company has said it would make "as soon possible." Oral arguments on the restraining order are scheduled for Monday before U.S. District Court Judge Janice Stewart.