Google Apologizes for Street View Cars
It seems Google has been caught in a bit of a pickle of sorts. Google has offered an apology about certain data collected through it's Street View program. The company sends out the Street View cars to take pictures and gather location data that is then uploaded to Google Map's Street View. Well, it seems that to access the location data, the cars connected to open wireless networks. The problem being, a few years ago a Google engineer had written a piece of code that would collect all manner of personal data over an open wireless network. That code, you guessed it, found its way into the Street View program which was then used by the various cars throughout the world.
Google apologized for the collection of personal data, saying that since the cars were always on the move it was never noticed until the data protection authority of Hamburg, Germany requested an audit of the program. Google then noticed all this personal data and quickly apologized. Google is planning on deleting all the personal data collected by the Street View cars, so people can rest easy. It also mentioned that all the Street View cars are grounded, so no new data or pictures can be taken. The big moral of the story folks is to password protect your wireless networks so nothing like this happens again.
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