Google admits that its Street View cars DID take emails and …
Recently I stumbled upon a wonderful article posted earlier today, by Aditya Bonda, and entitled Google admits that its Street View cars DID take emails and … that I strongly encourage everyone to read! Here’s some little excerpts in order to whet your appetites!
Privacy regulators in seven countries analysed the data following complaints about the Street View scheme, and it was their investigations which forced Google’s latest admission. In Britain, Privacy International lodged a complaint with Scotland Yard earlier this year. Officers are still considering whether a crime has been committed. The Information Commissioner said it would investigate Google’s latest admission.
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But consumers should also ensure their network has a password.’ Google’s new director of privacy, Alma Whitten, said: ‘We are profoundly sorry for having mistakenly collected payload data from unencrypted networks. ‘As soon as we realised what had happened, we stopped collecting all wi-fi data from our Street View cars and immediately informed the authorities. ‘This data has never been used in any Google product and was never intended to be used by Google in any way.
Now then, reading Aditya Bonda’s post started me off thinking so I had a quick search around for more articles on the subject and uncovered some more greatposts. For example, this post by Michel, posted last week, on a blog called Call Caffe:
2 Posted by Michel | Posted on 24-10-2010 Category : News We thought we saw the end of it when Google was cleared of wi-fi snooping by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) months ago. That changed when Alan Eustace, senior VP of engineering and research posted on Google’s blog, admitting that emails, URLs and passwords were among the data collected by the Street View vehicles. Related links Google TV: 7 things you need to know Android: 10 reasons to love the Google OS Ten ways Google is taking over the world Google’s most memorable doodles Google Maps Navigation app review In the post, he says: "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." The ICO had initially said that no significant details were collected but this post changes the situation. According to the BBC, the admission will trigger some action by the ICO.
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An ICO spokesperson said: "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." In May, Google had apologized for its Street View cars inadvertently collecting data from unsecured wireless networks. When it becamse aware of the unintentional data snooping, the Street View vehicles were taken off the roads, and investigations by data protection watchdogs in various countries began. As of July 2010, it resumed its Street View photography in certain countries after removing all data-collection equipment from its cars. Watch this space for updates on the Google Street View cars wi-fi snooping issue.
Another fine post came from John Ebbert on AdExchanger.com: Exchanging Ideas On Digital Media Optimization posted earlier today, entitled Audience Is King, Publishers Skeptical; Fastclick Founder Starts … which is also definitely worth a read!
) The matching is done in real time, banner by banner." Read more. But, Morrissey finds not everyone is a fan of the audience buying strategy through exchanges as Nick Johnson of NBCU says, “There are cottage industries being built off publishers (…) You’re going to see a lot of publishers taking their data back.” New From Fastclick Founder Fastclick founder (sold to ValueClick in 2005) Dave Gross has started a new company called Connexity.