Google fined €100K for data piracy

GOOGLE has been fined €100,000 by the data protection watchdog Cnil for “pirating” confidential data from homes using wifi from its Street View camera cars.

In what was its heaviest fine, the Commission nationale de l'informatique et des libertés found Google guilty of a very serious intrusion into people’s private lives by collecting personal data as its camera cars photographed streets across France.

The data included identity and password details, email details and information on sexual orientation.

Google’s Street View cars with their panoramic cameras had not only been carrying out their stated intention of photographing streets, but also carried wifi receivers and for three years had also been siphoning off and storing personal data from the wifi networks of the homes they passed.

Street View technology allowed people to view towns and cities street by street across the world, but Cnil said Google’s illegal theft of personal and sometimes intimate data had allowed the development of its powerful geolocation services, which had given it a world-leading position with Google Latitude.

Google was ordered to stop invading people’s privacy and to hand over a copy of the data collected.

Cnil said its analysis of this data showed Google had been collecting data including SIID and MAC addresses for wifi routers, personal data both identifiable and unidentifiable (such as connection information, bank passwords, email passwords, email addresses) and copies of emails with sensitive information on the health or sexual orientation of residents, including whether they visited sex sites.

While Google had agreed to stop collecting data through its Google cars and to get rid of any personal data, it would not stop using information on wifi access. Google will continue to collect personal data on smartphones through its geolocation service Latitude.

The Cnil says this is still a misuse of personal information and Google should at the very least warn people who use the Latitude software that it is collecting their personal data.