Google Street View Wi-Fi Data Includes Passwords, Email Content

snydeq writes "The French National Commission on Computing and Liberty has found passwords and email messages among the Street View Wi-Fi data Google intercepted, InfoWorld reports. The data protection authority has been investigating Google's recording of traffic carried over unencrypted Wi-Fi networks. Google has said it collected only 'fragments' of personal web traffic as it passed by because its Wi-Fi equipment automatically changes channels five times a second. With Wi-Fi networks operating at up to 54Mbps, however, those 'fragments' may have been more than that. 'We can already state that [...] Google did indeed record email access passwords [and] extracts of the content of email messages,' CNIL said."

Comments

Re:Well..

[fullgandoo]

Google IS at fault. Google has to know that most people using computers and wireless routers don't have a clue what exposure they are risking. Google has to know that if the same people understood the implications and if actually presented with a choice and a means to do so, they would clamp down their network.

At the very least, Google is guilty of exploiting the ignorance of an overwhelming majority of the population.

STOP MAKING BAD ANALOGIES

[Anonymous Coward]

Wifi traffic isn't like yelling at your neighbour at all.

Wifi snooping, like google did, is more like them plugging into an ethernet jack on the outside of your house when you've used a hub (and not a switch) and thus every port sees every packet.

They have to take deliberate action to record the traffic.
They cannot walk down the street and just "listen to it".
They have to have a special application and computer system setup and running to record it.
You cannot go to BestBuy, buy a laptop, turn it on and walk down the street and record what google did.
You need special software (and possibly hardware.)

There is nothing accidental about it at all.

Reading all of these bad analogies is like going back 15 years and hearing people argue about "port scanning" not being "bad".

You cannot judge IT things by non-IT things.

We need new laws that cover all of this shit.

The IT world has just moved too quickly for non-IT, that's all.

Re:Yikes!

[ElectricTurtle]

But they're here to help! After all, the Vichy government was so helpful to the German occupation in rounding up undesirables for the camps...