Google admits to collecting (inadvertently or not) wifi “payload” data while their street car was doing its rounds around the world. Here’s what the man had to say:
"Mr. Eustace wrote that a review of Street View software has revealed that due to a programming error in 2006, the company has indeed been mistakenly collecting samples of payload data from non-password protected Wi-Fi networks in Europe, in the United States and other major regions around the world.
Mr. Eustace tried to downplay the admission, saying that Google “never used that data in any Google products” and collected only fragments, because the cars were moving constantly and changing channels many times each second. Only when someone was using their unencrypted, non-password-protected network was the data collected and stored."
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/14/google-admits-to-snooping-on-personal-data/?ref=technology
