Italy orders Google to mark Street View cars: report ? Reuters …
Recently I found a good post posted earlier today, by unknown, over on Relevant News entitled Italy orders Google to mark Street View cars: report ? Reuters … that I suggest everyone reads! Here are some extracts to whet your appetites!
Now, reading unknown’s post started me off thinking so I googled for some other articles on the subject and discovered some more greatarticles. For example, this post posted two days ago, by Jeffrey Van Camp, over on Digital Trends:
Google is making 244,000 German households "unrecognizable" in its Street View feature on Google Maps after requests from authorities. Germans want their privacy and the Google abides. In a statement today, the search giant said it is blurring out more than 244,000 households from its Street View feature on Google Maps before the service launches in the country next month. Google estimates that about three percent of households in Germany’s 20 largest cities have opted out. Before it could launch Street View in the country, German authorities demanded Google allow citizens the opportunity to be removed from the service.
Yet another fine post came from Stephen over on TechIt.in – You Want it, We Tech it posted earlier today, entitled Google: How Google Collected Passwords by Street View Cars … which is also definitely worth reading.
However, besides taking images, these cars also captured (unsecured) WiFi data, which includes typed URLs, passwords and written E-mails. Earlier this year Google announced that it was broadening it’s Street View product to all major cities over the world. At the same time Google decided to collect WiFi SSIDs, which they could use for their Google Location Services (which is build in to all Android Smart Phones). Their intention was to create a map of all WiFi Networks in the world, which they then could use to locate a user when it was connected to the Internet through WiFi. However, due to a bug in the software all WiFi information was stored, rather than only the SSIDs and MAC addresses. Google Maps, on Street View mode When this issue came to light, Google stated that it only stored typed URL(s) and small pieces of internal pc-to-pc communication data. At the same time they stated that nobody had looked at the data and thus privacy wasn’t violated and promised to render the data anonymous as soon as possible. However, several governments were not satisfied by Google’s statement and announced a public investigation of the collected data.