Google faces Streetview wi-fi snooping action

Between 2008 and 2010, Google collected data from unsecured wi-fi networks in 30 countries, the data included emails, user names, passwords, images and documents.

Google has always claimed that the collection was inadvertent, following the mistaken inclusion of code, written by an unnamed Google engineer, in its Streetview software, it later emerged that a senior manager was aware that data was being collected by Streetview cars.

Google has apologised and agree to destroy the data, in the US it has paid $7m (£4.4m) in US fines to settle a case involving 38 states, as well as agreeing to delete all the harvested data, Google was also required to launch an employee training programme about privacy and data use which it must continue for at least 10 years.

source bbc