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Google Admits To Collecting Emails and Passwords
wiredmikey writes "Alan Eustace, Google's Senior VP of Engineering & Research, just put up an interesting blog post on how Google will be creating stronger privacy controls. Right at the end is an interesting admission: that after Streetview WiFi Payload data was analyzed by regulators, their investigations revealed that some incredibly private information was harvested in some cases. Eustace noted that 'It's clear from those inspections that while most of the data is fragmentary, in some instances entire emails and URLs were captured, as well as passwords.'"
Eric Schmidt flat-out said that the only people who care about privacy have something to hide, and they were caught archiving neighborhood WiFi data "accidentally." I don't know why people still treat Google as some benevolent open source company--their search and advertising platform is as closed source and proprietary as Windows.
Every free service they offer is to get you onto their indexing and advertising platforms. They use the moniker of "open" to attract people and trick them into think Google is ethical and is "one of them." And yet, no matter how many times it's proven what a sham their do-no-evil mantra is, they continue to have defenders who want everything they use to be Google-branded.
Eventually, the tide is going to turn, and they're going to be as derided as Microsoft. The transition is happening. Until then, you'll still get people who actually believe Google is an open company that's all about the engineering.
When they got caught, they were forced to own up to it or risk a backlash. That totally makes them not evil! Nobody pay attention to this critical story about Google!
The news here is that what was in the data is specifically being detailed. It says right in the article that they didn't know exactly what was in the data at first, so you're lying when you say there's nothing new here. The news is that it's been confirmed by regulators (not Google) that there were entire emails, URLs, passwords, and more archived by Google.
Like I said in another post, Google can do no wrong to some folks around here. Eric Schmidt actually came out and said that only people with something to hide care about privacy, and even that doesn't sway people like you. Fans to the bitter end, I guess.