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Google Street View Data Included Passwords and E-Mail

by Terrence O'Brien on June 18, 2010 at 02:10 PM

Google has privacy nightmaresIt was less than two weeks ago that Google agreed to turn over the data it inadvertently collected while assembling Street View. Now the French National Commission on Computing and Liberty (CNIL) has announced the results of its analysis and things do not look good for the G. Originally Google said that it had only recorded "fragments" of data, but an examination of the data revealed that it accidentally collected and stored complete passwords and e-mails.

Its too early to say what, if any, legal repercussions Google faces, but it's already clear that the company was not completely upfront about the incident which could further damage its reputation with consumers, many of whom have not completely forgiven it for the debacle that was the launch of Buzz. Things may only get worse as authorities in both Spain and Germany are also looking to audit the roughly 600GB of data. Of course, there is no reason to believe that there was any intentional wrongdoing on behalf of Google, and the company should be commended on its honest handling of the situation. Still, the collection and storing of private data is a massive mistake, and someone, somewhere is going to end up paying for it. [From: InfoWorld]

Tags: france, google, google street view, google streetview, GoogleStreetView, privacy, street view, StreetView, top

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