Google Street View cars captured e-mails, passwords – Big G admits

The wireless activities of Google Street View cars accidentally captured e-mails, passwords, entire URL of people surfing web, through their residential wireless network.

So, whereever these cars roam, e-mails and passwords were collected. Google first said, in May, commited actually, that their software (for street view) had codes that were collecting data from wireless networks. After investigation, they found out that Google had collected user data from unencrypted wireless networks. Further they investigated, went through the 600GB of data collected, thus now they conclude the data includes e-mails, passwords, and entire URL. Google says it’s a mistake happened, and will delete those data as soon as possible. They also promised for better privacy control, appointing Alma Whitten as their director of privacy “across both engineering and product management.”

(source: Google Blog)