Google deletes private data in Ireland; a complaint filed in U.S.

Google said Monday afternoon that upon the request of Ireland's Data Protection Authority, it has deleted private data it collected as part of its Street View application.

In a blog post, the company said that it deleted that information over the weekend in the presence of an independent third party. Google said it is also reaching out to other nations where it also collected data.

The controversy over Google’s data collection stems from its announcement Friday that it inadvertently collected private data off of unprotected, or unencrypted, Wi-Fi networks at homes while compiling photos for location-based services.

German officials blasted Google, saying the practice, even if in error, was illegal. California-based Consumer Watchdog filed a complaint to the Federal Trade Commission seeking an investigation on how the practice affected consumers.

“We are reaching out to Data Protection Authorities in the other relevant countries about how to dispose of the remaining data as quickly as possible,” wrote Alan Eustace, senior vice president of engineering and research at Google.

via Post Tech – Google deletes private data in Ireland; a complaint filed in U.S..

Whoops! Google says mistakenly got wireless data | Reuters

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Google Inc said its fleet of cars responsible for photographing streets around the world have for several years accidentally collected personal information that consumers send over wireless networks.

The company said on Friday that it is currently in touch with regulators in several countries, including the United States, Germany, France, Brazil and Hong Kong, about how to dispose of the data, which Google said it never used.

“It’s now clear that we have been mistakenly collecting samples of payload data from open (i.e. non-password-protected) WiFi networks,” Google Senior VP of Engineering and Research Alan Eustace said in a post on Google’s official blog on Friday.

Google, the world's largest Internet search engine, did not specify what kind of data it collected, but a security expert said that email content and passwords for many users, as well as general Web surfing activity, could easily have been caught in Google’s dragnet.

“The bottom line is a lot of personal content is definitely available in open WiFi hotspots,” said Steve Gibson, the president of Internet security services firm Gibson Research Corp.

via Whoops! Google says mistakenly got wireless data | Reuters.