Yesterday we mentioned that Google had admitted that its Street View Cars had captured private data that was being sent along open WiFi networks in the area where the cars were driving. Google reports that it did not use the data and didn’t know until recently that the “payload” data was being captured.
Google did know that its Street View cars captured the SSID and MAC address of secure wireless networks and maintains that none of the captured data was used in any Google projects. Google stated previously that it has grounded the Street View fleet until the error allowing the capture of data was fixed and it had initiated a third party investigation of the issue.
A consumer advocacy firm called Consumer Watchdog has called for the FTC to investigate Google. The advocacy group wants the FTC to determine how long Google has been collecting private data, how much data has been stored, and how it used the data. The FTC has not launched an inquiry at this time.
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