Google Admits to Collecting WiFi Data through Street View

Coming on the heels of the uproar over Facebook's recent privacy policy changes,reports that Google has found itself embroiled in a privacy dust-up involving its Street View feature in Google Maps. The search engine has admitted that its StreetView cars - which travel around the world with a 360-degree camera collecting images for the Street View feature - were also collecting WiFi information from different neighborhoods, including payload information about data being sent across wireless networks.Several weeks ago, Germany's Data Protection Authority asked Google to review its StreetView cars to determine what data it was collecting during its tours of German streets. Initially, Google claimed that it was only collecting data such as SSIDs and MAC addresses - open information that was not being illegally obtained. However, on Friday Google admitted that "it's now clear that we have been mistakenly collecting samples of payload data from open (i.e. non-password-protected) WiFi networks, even though we never used that data in any Google products."According to, this isn't the first time that Google has had issues with the German government over its Street View feature. An earlier planned launch of Street View in Germany was scrapped after government officials claimed that the service - which lets people see street level views of almost any location - violated German privacy laws.- Richard Manfredi

May 17, 2010