UK to Google: Delete Street View Data Or Else

[HardOCP News]

Holy cow man, how hard is it to delete some data that you supposedly didn't want / need in the first place?

Today's ruling is essentially the decree the ICO sent down in 2010, requiring that Google delete all data within the next 35 days. Upon completion, Google must inform the ICO that the data has been deleted. If the company fails to delete the data within that timeframe, it could be hit with a criminal offense for contempt of court.

 

[RGMBill]

Wow that article is poorly written. I mean, I KNOW what he's talking about, but he's not spelling it out, which means many, many people will think the UK is telling Google to delete all the pictures from Street View UK, while in reality it's just about the WiFi monitoring they were doing.

 

[chrispix]

I find this amusing, I had to explain this to my father.

Basically Google was collecting all wifi traffic, along with the signal strength, and gps coordinates to help make triangulation calculations better for using wifi to help pinpoint your position.

As part of this collection of data, they collected un-encrypted traffic over open wifi hotspots. These could include homes who have not enabled wep/wpa, public places such as libraries, coffee shops, hotels.

Since they were collecting all wifi data (probably for hidden ssid's and signal strength numbers), they collected traffic as they passed by which was not encrypted. The whole who-ha about google stealing 'passwords' and such is laughable.. This should be the real story..



If Google captured passwords while driving past open wifi hotspots there are two things to be aware of.

1) Anyone else can steal your password

2) Turn on encryption!
A) If at a public location, and you are logging into an account that does NOT use SSL, or you are not using SFTP, or SSH or any other encrypted transport, you are just asking yourself for trouble.
B) If at home, and you don't have WPA2 enabled, you are equally setting yourself up for having your information stolen.
C) Always, always, always make sure a site uses SSL (lock icon shown) when you are logging in / using the site. Otherwise people can snoop at what data you are looking at.

 

[collegeboy69us]

I actually feel for google on this -- im not a corporate kiss ass but if you, me, anyone, are on a public place, with equipment that's public, why should we be in trouble for seeing something that anyone can see?

Was google setting up a site that said "hey go to these coordinates for free wifi because this lad was too stupid to set a password".

I'm all for laws protecting the weak and vulnerable. But if you want to run a fully open wifi hot spot, be prepared to deal with risk of your data (sensitive or not) flying around un-encrypted.

I don't think it's any governments job to protect the stupid. The amount of stink created over this was all due to people themselves failing to secure their wifi.

If I just left my gun collection out in the front yard for everyone to see/touch/etc, I'm pretty sure I'd get in trouble for failing to secure my property when it's used during the commission of a crime. Why not something similar for wifi? Oh that's right reading setup instructions and following common sense is too hard for a majority of people.

 

[the-one1]

UK: Delete our data or else
Google: Or else what?
UK: Or else we'll report you to the EU
Google: pfff. That don't scare us
UK: And they will fine you a gazillion dollars
Google. Ok. FINE!
Google points to a single server and dismantles it
Google: See, its gone.
UK: Good. I see I got my point across.

 

[ThelvynD]

Maybe the NSA didn't want Google to delete it.