Google admits to collecting private Wi-Fi data

Google has admitted to collecting data from personal Wi-Fi networks when compiling information for its Street View service. After the German data protection authority (DPA) recently asked to audit the Wi-Fi data that its Street View cars collect for use in location-based products, the company looked again at the information collected. While the company had already admitted that the Street View cars collect publicly broadcast SSID information and MAC addresses from Wi-Fi networks, the company has now realised it was also downloading payload data from open Wi-Fi networks. Google said it never used that data in any Google products and noted that it only had fragments of data as its cars were moving and its equipment changes channels frequently, up to five times a second. The company said the move was a "mistake", resulting from the unintentional inclusion of experimental software code in the Street View cars' equipment. Google said that as soon as it became aware of the issue, the company grounded the Street View cars and segregated the data on its network, which was then disconnected to make it inaccessible. The company is in talks with regulators in the relevant countries on how to delete the data. In addition to an internal review, Google plans to ask a third party to review its software and how the private data was handled. It will also stop Street View cars from collecting any Wi-Fi network data in future. The company said it was "acutely aware that we failed badly here" and was "profoundly sorry for this error". Google also announced that it will be offering an encrypted version of its search service from next week, in addition to the existing encrypted Gmail service.