Google mistakenly collected data on open WiFi-networks

On Friday, May 14th Internet giant Google confessed that the company has “inadvertently” collected the data about unprotected city networks in houses and offices of the companies when spent shooting of cities for project Google Street View. For given tools Google started on big cities specially equipped cars which have been equipped by cameras of circle shooting and other equipment.

For improved usage given radar tools, and also that to understand how people use them, the company also has collected the data about wireless WiFi-networks. And, the data was collected only about not protected networks to which it was possible to be connected.

In the Internet company say that the technicians only have obtained recently the data that in shootings partial data on user’s Internet activity have got to the data – headers email also, a part of Internet packages and other data which were at the moment of shooting in house and corporate wireless networks of users.

Google Leaders assures that any of this data were never applied to operation of any tools Google and not transferred to the third party. In communique Google it is told that the given incident has occurred to networks because of an error in the software.

In blog Google it is said that the company apologizes for an error and assures that at present the data about networks does not arrive any more in base Google. “All is simple enough: it was the error”, – Alan Estejs, high vice-president Google speaks.

As he said, the code of the program for the analysis and data processing Street View has been written in 2006 and included the complete functional linked to the data opened at that point in time and technologies. Now Google has already notified regulators on the given situation and has informed that has started destruction of the data about networks.

Independent experts mark that in many countries USA and Europe about public WiFi-networks are engaged in data collecting many commercial companies that in the future on the basis of this information to start the tools linked to definition of location. In Google say that the company will buy such data if necessary from suppliers of this information.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 29th, 2010 at 2:22 pm and is filed under Google News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.