Google Street View Cars Spied On Users' Wi-Fi

If you felt violated when the Google Street View car took a photo of your front lawn and posted it on Google Maps, you'd probably rather not know what it saw when it was intercepting data on your Wi-Fi network.

In a post Friday afternoon on its public policy blog, the company admitted that it had "mistakenly" collected not just the location and address data from public Wi-Fi networks, but also unsecured content flowing across those networks--information like what Web sites a user was visiting, what files he or she downloaded, or what videos the user watched.

Google has long collected Wi-Fi network location information to better triangulate the location of mobile users who don't have GPS enabled on their phones, instead using information about Wi-Fi signals the user is receiving. But the search giant admits that since 2007, it has also been collecting content data from unsecured networks, a result, it says, of accidentally implementing experimental code that a developer created in 2006.
Google says it only discovered that its cars were snooping on actual Wi-fi network content when it responded to a German privacy agency's request to audit the Wi-Fi data its cars had collected. It had previously responded to criticism in April with claims that it collected only location and address data, not actual content.

According to Google, those cars were "grounded" as soon as it discovered the problem and isolated their data to prevent its employees or outsiders from accessing it. "We want to delete this data as soon as possible, and are currently reaching out to regulators in the relevant countries about how to quickly dispose of it," Alan Eustace, a senior Google engineer, writes on Google's blog. The company says it's also working with a third party firm to review the software and the company's internal procedures to ensure similar violations don't occur in the future.

The admission, along with Google's earlier denials of the privacy violation, will likely send a shockwave through the movement of consumer advocates who already suspect that Google collects more information than it publicly admits. It may be used as fodder in the discussions around the controversial online advertising bill that was introduced earlier this month for public commentary.

"We are acutely aware that we failed badly here," Eustace adds. "We are profoundly sorry for this error and are determined to learn all the lessons we can from our mistake."

One lesson that we can all take from this still-unfolding scandal: Keep your Wi-Fi network password protected. Especially when a Volkswagen with an enormous camera rolls around the corner.