Google gets UK OK on privacy in slurping probe Google's privacy policy has been gently applauded by Information Commissioner Christopher Graham, who came under sharp criticism for his initial "lily-livered" handling of the company's Street View Wi-Fi data-slurping operation. An audit by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) took place last month at Google's London …
As they are also driving around sniffing Wifi and tying them to locations....
http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_on_the_issues/archive/2011/07/01/microsoft-shares-source-code-for-wi-fi-data-collection-software.aspx
Personally out of all the Evil companies, Microsoft are the worst, and I suspect whey they show here are what they actually use are two very different things...
Oh, absolutely. And Google, they're the worst too. And Apple? They're also the worst, as it happens.
Personally, what you suspect a company is doing is utterly irrelevant. I suspect you might be hoarding illegal donkey porn and hope the police search your computer soon; of all the evil denizens of the internet, ones called 'Mike Judge' are the worst, and what you claim to have on your computer and what is actually there are two very different things.
I still don't feel that the drive by WI-FI data grab was ever an issue.
If there had been even the vaguest of encryption that needed circumventing then that's a different story. Similarly if it had been inside a closed system (software snooping on other software within a computer).
Otherwise it was information broadcast on an open unlicensed band in clear view. I think it sets an awkward (possibly dangerous?) precedent to say that people should expect privacy when they're effectively shouting across the room and taking no action to hide that fact.
I'm no Google fan boy, I general avoid feeding the ad machine. But just because someone isn't the recipient doesn't mean they can't/wont listen in.
It seems clear to me that legal system in the UK (perhaps elsewhere) exists to protect the wealth and power of the wealthy and powerful. At whatever level in society could someone blatantly break the law and be told, "it's OK, provided you promise not to do it again"? The law comes down hard on even the mistakes of the poor.
And entrusting data privacy to Google is a bit like entrusting the henhouse to the foxes. It makes you wonder why we have a government at all.
Google slurping unencrypted wifi data isn't really like them stealing from your house though, is it? I mean, isn't it more like them coming and taking photos of something you left out on your lawn? Which, incidentally...
Don't get me wrong, i'm not entirely comfortable with the whole street view thing - the internet remembering things in general rather scares me - but making inflamatory comparisons doesn't really help.
My wi-fi is encrypted. So how did my computers' and wi-fi enabled devices' MAC IDs end up in Google's database, accessible through their API, publicly viewable before Google shut that door.
Does that explain how Google knows where I am so that when I make searches I get local results with a distance marker to help me find which business is nearest? How does Google have my address attached to my IP address when I have never used any Google service which could connect my physical and IP addresses?
There is only one thing to do with Google and that is add the following to the hosts file:
127.0.0.1 www.google.co.uk
127.0.0.1 www.google.com
etc
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