Google finally admits that its Street View …
Earlier today, I stumbled upon a brilliant post posted earlier today, by admin2, and entitled Google finally admits that its Street View … that I would strongly suggest all of you read. Here’s some excerpts to whet your appetites!
Daily Mail 25.10.2010 By Vanessa Allen Google finally admits that its Street View cars DID take emails and passwords from computers Google was accused of spying on households yesterday after it admitted secretly copying passwords and private emails from home computers. The internet search giant was forced to confess it had downloaded personal data during its controversial Street View project, when it photographed virtually every street in Britain. In an astonishing invasion of privacy, it admitted entire emails, web pages and even passwords were âmistakenly collectedâ by antennae on its high-tech Street View cars. Privacy campaigners accused the company of spying and branded its behaviour âabsolutely scandalousâ. The Information Commissionerâs Office said it would launch a new investigation. Scotland Yard is already considering whether the company has broken the law.
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Google registered the location, name and identification code of millions of networks and entered them into a database to help it sell adverts. The firm – which uses the slogan âDonât be evilâ – was able to record the location of every wireless router and network without alerting households because wi-fi signals are âvisibleâ to other internet devices, including the carsâ antennae. Google played down the significance of the wi-fi mapping and insisted it had not collected or stored data from personal computers. It then backtracked and said its software had âinadvertentlyâ collected fragments of data which were being transmitted as the cars criss-crossed Britain. The carsâ antennae skipped networks five times a second, it said, meaning each network was only accessed for one-fifth of a second. But it has now emerged that entire emails, web pages and passwords were copied and stored during that split-second. The information was only gathered from wireless networks which were not password-protected.
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But it means the antennae potentially harvested millions of private emails and passwords around the country. It is not known how many householders have unprotected wireless networks. The Street View project has triggered privacy investigations around the world. In Australia, the countryâs communications minister Stephen Conroy said the data harvest was the âsingle greatest breach in the history of privacyâ.
Now, reading admin2′s post started me off thinking so I searched for some other posts on the subject and discovered some more nicearticles! e.g. Google Draws Ire of British Over Gross Invasion of Privacy … by Frank Reed, posted earlier today, on Linkdor Blog:
When I wrote it, no one inside Google had analyzed in detail the data we had mistakenly collected, so we did not know for sure what the disks contained. Since then a number of external regulators have inspected the data as part of their investigations (seven of which have now been concluded). It’s clear from those inspections that while most of the data is fragmentary, in some instances entire emails and URLs were captured, as well as passwords. We want to delete this data as soon as possible, and I would like to apologize again for the fact that we collected it in the first place. We are mortified by what happened, but confident that these changes to our processes and structure will significantly improve our internal privacy and security practices for the benefit of all our users. That’s pretty funny.
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Did anyone really think that Google got lucky and didn’t gather any truly sensitive data during this ‘mistake’? Britain’s powers that be have used this admission to help move forward in what is likely to be as much a political move as a practical one (what isn’t these days, right?) “Now that these findings are starting to emerge, we understand that Google has accepted that in some instances entire URLs and emails have been captured. We will be making enquires to see whether this information relates to the data inadvertently captured in the UK, before deciding on the necessary course of action, including a consideration of the need to use our enforcement powers.” Will Google be able to shake this Street View thing loose without paying the piper somewhere along the line? The law of averages may be against them if more governments decide to take this route as well. Small price to pay I suppose considering the performance Goggle reported recently, huh? These kinds of mistakes may just be classified under “cost of doing business” since it’s all new anyway.
Finally, another fine article came from Levi Sumagaysay on GMSV posted earlier today and entitled The privacy strikes, they just keep coming: Google, RapLeaf … which is also certainly worth reading!
Just because some of us think something is a moot point — or dead — doesn’t mean we should stop paying attention. With that in mind, I’m not sure which topic I read about more over the weekend, the World Series-bound San Francisco Giants, or online privacy. Here are some highlights about the latter. • Since SpyFi — whose massive reach is basically anywhere in the world Google Street View vehicles may have gone — became publicly known in May, Google has maintained that it had “inadvertently” collected only fragments of data over unsecured wireless networks. Last week, however, findings by Canada’s privacy office revealed that Street View cars collected personal data such as usernames, passwords, e-mails and phone numbers.
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We want to delete this data as soon as possible, and I would like to apologize again for the fact that we collected it in the first place,” and that “we’re acutely aware that we failed badly here.” Google says it has appointed a director of privacy; is improving training for “engineers and other important groups”; is adding an information security awareness program for all employees; and will require that managers maintain a privacy-compliance record for each project. Google’s admission has caused a double-take in the U.K. The BBC reported yesterday that Britain’s Information Commissioner’s Office, which had earlier this year found that no “significant” personal details were collected by Google’s Street View vehicles, will look again. • This morning, a Wall Street Journal article examines RapLeaf, San Francisco-based online-tracking company that has one key difference from other similar companies: It collects people’s names, which it then ties to e-mail addresses and other publicly available information — both from online and offline — to build what GigaOm’ Om Malik calls “the ultimate dossier” on people.
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Last week, Malik identified RapLeaf’s role in the latest Facebook privacy controversy, which involves third-party applications exposing user information to advertising and tracking companies. Today’s WSJ article mentions that among RapLeaf’s users are political organizations that target online ads to likely voters. So if politicians are using services such as RapLeaf, how exactly are we supposed to count on legislation to help us preserve any kind of privacy online? • Also over the weekend, the WSJ reported that MySpace, another social networking site, sent user IDs to third parties, including Google, when users clicked on ads. Google and the other third parties said they did not use the data.