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

Posted by Soulskill on Friday June 18, 2010 @05:52AM from the top-of-the-line-pr-nightmare dept.

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."

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Re:Well.. by pak9rabid · 2010-06-18 06:02 · Score: 3, Interesting

Perhaps not, but I don't think Google should be faulted for obtaining what is essentially information being made public. Now, if they were doing things like cracking somebody's WPA-protected (or hell, even WEP) wireless signals, then yes, they should be.

Analogy time....say somebody is in their front yard, holding up a big sign that has their "my bank password is xxx". Should someone passing by in the street get shit for looking over and noticing that?