Google Street View Cars Collected Emails and Passwords [Google]

Google announced today that the Wi-Fi snooping its Street View vans were engaged in was even worse than previously acknowledged . The company announced today that entire URLs, emails, and passwords were collected in addition. And they still have it.

Google broke the inside track at the tip of a lengthy blog post late Friday afternoon, so it’s safe to assert it’s something they’re not particularly happy with. The revelation didn’t even come from Google itself; the breach was discovered by external regulators who had been investigating Google for its illicit data collecting. In step with Google exec Alan Eustace:

It’s clear from those inspections that while many of the data is fragmentary, in some instances entire emails and URLs were captured, in addition as passwords. We wish to delete this information as soon as possible, and I need to apologize again for the undeniable fact that we collected it within the first place.

So for months, Google has been sitting on extremely sensitive personal information, and it took outside auditors to get them in finding and attach it. And although Google wants to delete the information soon, all that implies is that it hasn’t been deleted yet.

In response, Google has appointed a new director of privacy for engineering and product management, announced that they’re going to complement ” core training” for staff aware of private data, and tightened their compliance standards. It’s a bit like putting up a stop sign up a busy intersection five months after a terrible accident.

The more we hear in regards to the Wi-Fi snooping , the more severe it gets. And paired with reports of employee abuse of sensitive data , every new disclosure raises more questions than it answers. [ Google via Reuters ]

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This post is tagged: compliance standards, friday afternoon, product management, sensitive data, terrible accident, undeniable fact