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Google Says It Mistakenly Collected Wi-Fi Data While Mapping
Even if Google says there's nothing to worry about, newviewmedia.com writes, the company "said it would stop collecting Wi-Fi network data from its StreetView cars, after an internal investigation it conducted found it was accidentally collecting data about websites people were visiting over the hotspots.
From the WSJ article: 'It's now clear that we have been mistakenly collecting samples of payload data from open [i.e. non-password-protected] Wi-Fi networks, even though we never used that data in any Google products.'"
they're not called `open networks` for nothing. Tighten up, or shut up. Oh, and postmen read your postcards too.
Me: "Why are there drawings all over the wall?!?"
Her: "It was an accident! I didn't mean to do it!"
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Yeah you do. When you say "Hey, let's see what open wi-fi stuff is out there", and tune into those signals, you pick up on some spare traffic...and if you're saving every packet you come across for later processing (like 'what open wi-fi router was this'), then yeah, it's going to get saved like the rest.
Then they looked at the data they'd saved, said "Oh hey we didn't mean to get that stuff". Kind of like if you're logging all data that someone sends when they're connected to your open Telnet port, and you realize later that it saves their username/password along with the rest--it wasn't a conscious decision, you might not have thought about it at all, you might never plan to even look at the logs except in some specific cases, and while a workaround might take some time...you kind of drop a brick when your legal team realizes you have it.
AP information is packet data (they're called beacon frames). Looking for beacon frames is a lot more effective at finding APs on the move than using whatever built-in scan feature your card drivers have. They probably had a SNAFU and forgot to filter out data packets in their capturing setup, instead storing everything that hits the antenna (or some engineer didn't realize it would be an issue).
I wonder if they were using "off the shelf" open source tools to collect this information.
By default Kismet will log the pcap file, gps log, alerts, and network log in XML and plaintext.
http://www.kismetwireless.net/documentation.shtml
It is entirely possible that they were using off the shelf open source tools and this log type was simply not turned off in the configuration file.
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