ICOMP

Many in the US and Europe were surprised when a German official managed to get an admission out of Google that the company had – systematically, over the course of three plus years – collected private information from consumers, businesses and governments over unsecured Wi-Fi networks. In its official blog post, Google admitted that it had misled users and data protection agencies. In spite of earlier claims to the contrary, Google admitted that when driving around Europe (and the US as well) to take pictures for its Street View application, Google was also collecting samples of payload data (i.e. emails and documents) from open (i.e. non-password-protected) Wi-Fi networks. Google’s claims that it did this “mistakenly” and it “never used that data in any Google products” leave many unanswered questions.
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