Google admits personal data collection 'blunder'

[suityou01]

LinkyPinkySchmoo

Google has admitted that for the past three years it has wrongly collected information people have sent over unencrypted wi-fi networks.

The issue came to light after German authorities asked to audit the data the company's Street View cars gathered as they took photos viewed on Google maps.

Sites such as google, yahoo, bing have long be known to collect such data. The only issue is it got pointed out again.
In America, the fed monitor all web traffic, emails, telephone calls in the interest of national security. Darpa were building a global information grid (not sure how far that project has come along) and the UK government at the time had similar initiatives.

<adjusts tin foil hat as it is itching a bit>

Gurn

AnotherLinkyPinkySchmoo

A massive government database holding details of every phone call, e-mail and time spent on the internet by the public is being planned as part of the fight against crime and terrorism. Internet service providers (ISPs) and telecoms companies would hand over the records to the Home Office under plans put forward by officials.

[NickFitz]

Good job they don't monitor CUK.

Anyway, can't stop, I've got a PM from emmyfife asking me to change the templates again

[Sysman]

In a blogpost Google said as soon as it became aware of the problem it grounded its Street View cars from collecting wi-fi information and segregated the data on its network.

That doesn't tally with what they said here:

22nd April - Germany slams Google for mapping wireless hotspots

Google Germany said it had never been a secret that it was mapping WLANs and denied it was illegal, saying many companies already did this. “It’s not new, and we’re not the only ones doing it,” said spokesman Kay Oberbeck.

Related news:

Germans face fines for leaving Wifi unsecured

[Sysman]

Good job they don't monitor CUK.

Google does try to access my home systems, even though I'm on a completely different address from the one I used when running a webserver from home. The firewall blocks it, but why are they looking?

And a new arrival in my firewall logs today - Facebook is trying to access port 80. WTF are they doing there?

[suityou01]

Google does try to access my home systems, even though I'm on a completely different address from the one I used when running a webserver from home. The firewall blocks it, but why are they looking?

And a new arrival in my firewall logs today - Facebook is trying to access port 80. WTF are they doing there?

So facebook is crawling now?

[Sysman]

So facebook is crawling now?

Oops. My mistake.

Facebook is coming from port 80 and trying to connect to a non-privileged port. Unless it's something to do with Twitter, which I was logged into at the time...

I don't have a Facebook account.