FCC Investigating Google Street View Wi-Fi Data Collection

adeelarshad82 writes "The Federal Communications Commission is looking into whether Google's Street View Wi-Fi data collection violated the Communications Act. At issue is a May admission from Google that equipment attached to its Street View cars collected data that was traveling over unencrypted Wi-Fi networks, known as payload data. At first Google said it did not know if that data included personally identifiable information, but the company admitted last month that it did include entire e-mail addresses, URLs, and passwords. Google has pledged to work with the FCC."

Comments

Re:Why? WHY???

[The Salamander]

Access point MACs, signal strength, and latitude / longitude coordinates gives you a geolocation database you can use to calculate your position via WiFi, ie: skyhook.