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Google’s harvesting of e-mails, passwords and other sensitive personal information from unsuspecting households in the United States and around the world was neither a mistake nor the work of a rogue engineer, as the company long maintained, but a program that supervisors knew about, according to new details from the full text of a regulatory report.
The report, prepared by the Federal Communications Commission after a 17-month investigation of Google’s Street View project, was released, heavily redacted, two weeks ago. Although it found that Google had not violated any laws, the agency said Google had obstructed the inquiry and fined the company $25,000.
The full version draws a portrait of a company where an engineer can easily embark on a project to gather personal e-mails and Web searches of potentially hundreds of millions of people as part of his or her unscheduled work time, and where privacy concerns are shrugged off.
Last year I deleted my gmail account and then about three months ago I decided google.com would no longer be my browser's home page & replaced it with another search engine. That's because I got fed up with the continuous reports of their various ethical screw-ups & their arrogance concerning their users (again, that was before this report being discussed here came out).
I really used to admire this company and they were my home page for nearly a decade, but when they went public, my gut told me that like so many other independent-minded private companies with a great product, they would very likely be roped in and forced to do things to make sure their bottom-line was taken care of, and to hell with anything else. And to me, that is exactly what happened.
meh! I've seen people that I trust a lot less sitting in their car on the road below my house probably trying to get into my WiFi. That's why its secured
If anyone can collect any information while driving by, perhaps you should also secure your wireless. Just saying...............
This does bring up an interesting question, tho. If you are using a Wifi router, whether you realize it or not, you are effectively casting your internet traffic (encrypted or not) to the public within your limited transmission radius.
It isn't like Google tapped people's phone lines. It gathered radio information that was broadcast by users onto the public roadway space on Wifi frequencies.
I can see how that would be a Bad Thing To Do in some ways, but I can also understand the curiosity on the part of the engineers as to what sorts of data they could discover and create interesting maps from.
I would probably have limited my data gathering, tho. Identify the density of wifi networks, perhaps, but not much more.
I saw the Google car when they were street mapping here, and they are driving with the flow of traffic. They drive by many WiFi locations and can capture many frame but only from a single AP for a matter of seconds.
Now what could they glean from this?
The vendors of the wireless router or AP (determined by the MAC)
The vendor of the wireless card or adapter in the device (again determined by the MAC)
The SSID
The above would be for all sites they are near to capture frames from.
Below depending on if the wireless was secured or not.
If the user had their WiFi open, they could determine the sites they are connected to (by the IP)
If the user had secured their WiFi (even with WEP) they could determine what level of security user implement, but not connections to sites on the internet.
So they can collect these statistics, big whooping deal. Now keep in mind that they drive by any location only once or twice (and maybe again in 10 - 20 years) and you worry about this? Maybe you should secure your wireless.
Also keep in mind that your ISP can sees all of your traffic, who you connect to, and has the ability to identify you and are collecting and archiving this information.
I saw the Google car when they were street mapping here, and they are driving with the flow of traffic. They drive by many WiFi locations and can capture many frame but only from a single AP for a matter of seconds.
Now what could they glean from this?
The vendors of the wireless router or AP (determined by the MAC)
The vendor of the wireless card or adapter in the device (again determined by the MAC)
The SSID
The above would be for all sites they are near to capture frames from.
Below depending on if the wireless was secured or not.
If the user had their WiFi open, they could determine the sites they are connected to (by the IP)
If the user had secured their WiFi (even with WEP) they could determine what level of security user implement, but not connections to sites on the internet.
So they can collect these statistics, big whooping deal. Now keep in mind that they drive by any location only once or twice (and maybe again in 10 - 20 years) and you worry about this? Maybe you should secure your wireless.
Also keep in mind that your ISP can sees all of your traffic, who you connect to, and has the ability to identify you and are collecting and archiving this information.
Agreed, on all accounts. If you don't want yor browsing history and at least some of your personal information floating around in cyberspace, then stop using the internet, and never get online again. Ever.
every time I read this title I read it "googley eyes"
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Just saying...............
