Google Street View secretly took your wi-fi details

[crippen]

Google Street View secretly took your wi-fi details... and will use the data to target ads at mobile phones
By JASON LEWIS, MAIL ON SUNDAY SECURITY EDITOR
Last updated at 10:23 PM on 29th May 2010

Google is facing renewed privacy concerns after it secretly mapped every single wireless internet connection in Britain – including those in millions of homes – to help it sell advertising and other services.
The move was part of the search engine’s controversial Street View project, which drew widespread criticism after it photographed people’s houses and published the images on the internet.
Now it has been revealed that the firm had failed to disclose that it was simultaneously building a massive database of individual home wi-fi networks across the UK and in other countries.
As Google’s distinctive fleet of cars, fitted with roof-mounted cameras, cruised Britain’s streets over the past three years photographing every house and public building, antennae inside were also pinpointing the wi-fi hotspots.


There were earlier reports that Google had admitted accidentally collecting some emails from ‘open’ wireless networks. But The Mail on Sunday today reveals how – and why – the company has collected details of all wi-fis, even those protected by security.
Last night the firm, one of the world’s most powerful companies and worth £28billion, admitted that it should have been ‘more transparent’ about the full extent of the project and pledged to stop mapping any new personal wireless networks in future.
But it said it would not delete the information it had already obtained from the Street View project which now covers almost every road in Britain.
Personal wireless equipment – known as a router – allows people to access the internet from anywhere in their homes without plugging laptops and other devices into a telephone point.
However, the broadcast signal is not confined by the walls of a property and its footprint will often spill into neighbouring buildings and the street outside.
Internet providers encourage people to set up passwords to prevent anyone from using their web connection without their knowledge or potentially gaining access to personal information held on their computers.
But, even with a password in place, Google was able, without alerting anyone in advance or seeking any permission, to log the locations of all these wi-fi networks noting their names, called SSIDs, and the unique MAC, or Media Access Control, address of people’s personal equipment.
There are fears – dismissed as ‘conspiracy theories’ by Google officials – that personal information, together with the precise location of specific computer devices mapped by the firm, could be cross-referenced to track individuals’ internet use for commercial reasons.
The internet giant, which made profits of £4.5billion last year, says it is now using the data it gathered to offer location-based commercial services and advertising to mobile phone users and people with other portable devices, including Apple’s much-hyped iPad.


Read more: Google Street View secretly took your wi-fi details... and will use the data to target ads at mobile phones | Mail Online

[barbaro]

Thanks, Crippen.

I am not surprised. Face book, all other means, and now wifi with Google street.

The marketing industry makes its moves, people try to shield and protect themselves, and the industries break through it or finds new ways.

Reminds me of the days of have radar detectors (fuzz busters).

[PlanK]

In America they've done a similar thing with Skyhook

Skyhook Wireless - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wardriving (driving around with a lappie picking up wifi access points) has given them a database to use to track you down to within 20 - 30 metres of your location

[planestanley]

sneeky

[Overman]

It's only to sell advertising, nothing sinister.

[Mid]

Google illegally gathered data in S.Korea: Police
Jan 6, 2011


The Google logo is displayed outside Google headquarters in Mountain View, California. South Korean police have found evidence that Google illegally collected private data while producing its Street View mapping service.
PHOTO: AP

SEOUL - SOUTH Korean police have found evidence that Internet giant Google illegally collected private data while producing its Street View mapping service, a report said on Thursday.

Yonhap news agency said the police's cyber crime unit has decoded data stored on hard disks used for Google Street View and found evidence of illegally gathered private information.

'We've discovered records and contents of e-mails and online messenger chats individuals exchanged through Wi-Fi networks,' said a police official quoted by Yonhap.

Around 10 Google employees in South Korea and the US said during the probe that they had no knowledge of what had been collected, the report said.

A police agency spokesman confirmed the report but refused to give details. A spokesman for Google in Seoul declined to comment.

The police investigation echoes those in the United States, Germany and Italy and comes after Google admitted its Street View cars, which have been cruising and taking photographs of cities in over 30 countries, had inadvertently gathered fragments of personal data sent over unsecured Wi-Fi systems. -- AFP

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