Let's be honest: we all suspected that those roaming Google cars were up to more than taking pictures of roads, and didn't want to believe it, but now we know for sure. This is something that should send a shiver down the spine of every UK resident for it's clear that Google has been harvesting lots of personal information through unencrypted wireless networks. What they will do with this information is the scary part. Big Brother is definitely coming to a town near you soon.
Google, pictured street-mapping in Bristol, has
always claimed that it didn't know its software would collect the
private information.
Now Google is facing an inquiry into claims that it deliberately harvested information from millions of UK home computers. The Information Commissioner data protection watchdog is expected to examine the work of the internet giant’s Street View cars. They
downloaded emails, text messages, photographs and documents from wi-fi
networks as they photographed virtually every British road.
It is two years since Google first admitted stealing fragments of personal data, but claimed it was a ‘mistake’. Now
the full scale of its activities has emerged amid accusations of a
cover-up after US regulators found a senior manager was warned as early
as 2007 that the information was being captured as its cars trawled the
country but did nothing.
Around
one in four home networks in the UK is thought to be unsecured –
lacking password protection – allowing personal data to be collected.
Technology websites and bloggers have suggested that Google harvested
the information simply because it was able to do so and would later work
out a way to use it to make money.
Ordinary people need to wise up. The days when you had complete privacy in your own home are over and, with the millions of cameras out in public streets, you have to ask yourself a fundamental questions: is there anywhere completely private in this world nowadays?
