It has emerged that Google’s Street View cars were doing more than photographing 95% of the UK when they toured the country earlier this year.
The cars were also bristling with radio antennae, with the intention of picking up signals from wi-fi networks, which leak out beyond the home the network is based in.
Google’s idea was to build a map of wi-fi hotspots, to better target adverts to mobile phone users in their local area. Better targeted ads equals more money for the search company, basically.
However, while mapping out the wi-fi contours of the country, Google was “mistakenly” sampling data from these unsecured wireless networks.
Apparently a section of errant code in the mapping program meant that little snippets of emails, documents and suchlike were collected from unsecured networks. In other words, people’s private communications and online activities.
For its part, Google says that the data is not identifiable to an individual, and is publicly broadcast information which technically anyone could get access to, at any time.
Obviously they still shouldn’t have been collecting bits of it, though, as the company admits that wasn’t its intention. Privacy activists are naturally up in arms, with the threat of class action lawsuits looming.
The Telegraph noted that Google has suspended the use of its Street View cars across the globe in the light of this affair – although the cars are already back in their garages in Britain, as the mapping job has been completed.
This is, of course, also a lesson in securing your wi-fi network, which evidently is a consideration that many of the public still haven’t grasped the importance of.
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