Google stops deleting your personal data

Google halted the global deletion of collected private WiFi data on Friday following confusion over what it should do with the material.

This little piece caught my attention in the article:

Last week, Google revealed it had intercepted personal data from homes and businesses while taking photos for its Street View service. The data had been collected in 30 countries during the past three years.

Don't you want your personal data available on the Internet?

Instead of Google Street View, they should call it Google Voyeur. You can scan inside windows and maybe even catch a look at your favorite girl next door.

Maybe you wanna find out if Betty is at the office today because she hasn't answered the phone. Just zoom in the window and...

What to do with all this personal data?

[edit on 21-5-2010 by dzonatas]

Google halted the global deletion of collected private WiFi data on Friday following confusion over what it should do with the material.

Heh? I thought it was fairly obvious that they were supposed to delete it! After all, they collected it illegally!

To me, this makes it seem like Google knew what it was doing. They want this data to make more money. I hope that someone gets onto Google and makes them start deleting this data again.

[edit on 5/21/2010 by octotom]

Google simply scares the hell out of me, i honestly put them just below the NSA in the scare factor department, there is some evidence the two are linked anyway. If i had the power i would shut them down instantly, no single entity should have that much concentrated information about people imo.

[edit on 21-5-2010 by Solomons]

This goes beyond than just google voyeur:

Google photographs homes from public streets, using a fleet of company cars.

To better pinpoint addresses for people using Google’s location services, the cars also harvest data from wireless networks in the homes, provided they had not been secured by passwords.

Source

If google can does this, who is to stop anybody else?

There are advantages to leave open a home network to allow any connection, yet this puts quite a twist on it.

[edit on 21-5-2010 by dzonatas]

reply to post by dzonatas


Couple that with logging search terms and profiling them to your IP, facebook where they have rights to everything you write and pics you upload. The normal argument is that your not important enough for anyone to care about, but that's missing the whole point i think.

[edit on 21-5-2010 by Solomons]

reply to post by dzonatas


Nothing is stopping other to do so, it wsn't before google's action, it isn't after, if you have a open connection, pretty simple it is open.

What is the benefit to you to have an open connection? to me, i don't know other then to piss of intruders.

Do you have unsecured router? If so, I'd worry less about Google than that guy in his van if I were you.

Street View does not provide real time imagery. If you want to check on Betty you're going to have to take a drive. But if you take that drive, are you invading Betty's privacy? Want to take a look at the girl next door? Just look across the street from your driveway, you'll get a better view than you will from Street View.

reply to post by Solomons


I totally agree with you. Stop using their products and wipe your pc free of any google add-ons. I've not used them for over two years under similar concerns.

Google and google execs were massive contributors to Obama and Schmidt sits on Obama's technology council. Google is the government.

The next thing they are going to do is appropriate this information for national security purposes. No single entity should have all of this personal information.

Originally posted by Dumbass
What is the benefit to you to have an open connection? to me, i don't know other then to piss of intruders.

To share the network.

Consider that your ISP charges you so much money a month just to connect to the Internet. With an open connection, then it becomes easier to connect to neighbors, or even greater distances with the right equipment. Speeds over 50MB/month basically free.

reply to post by dzonatas

So put a password on your router.
Oh, I see, you want to steal from your neighbor's connection. Ok then, passwords are bad.


[edit on 5/21/2010 by Phage]

Originally posted by dzonatas

Originally posted by Dumbass
What is the benefit to you to have an open connection? to me, i don't know other then to piss of intruders.

To share the network.

Consider that your ISP charges you so much money a month just to connect to the Internet. With an open connection, then it becomes easier to connect to neighbors, or even greater distances with the right equipment. Speeds over 50MB/month basically free.

So, you want to steal from others?

That is why my internet is protected like Ft. Knox - so thieves don't steal what I pay for.



(I hope I misread you)

reply to post by Phage


They really don't help, right now if i look on connections i can get in my area most of my neighbors are WEP, easily hacked. Even the more secure ones can be hacked by someone who has read a few pages of info. Thankfully i live in a small village so wifi bandits are probably not a cause for concern, big cities are where you should be more careful.

[edit on 21-5-2010 by Solomons]

Originally posted by Phage
Street View does not provide real time imagery.

Maybe you haven't seen this video:

reply to post by Solomons

I know. But Google isn't into hacking, they just looked for open routers.

[edit on 5/21/2010 by Phage]

Originally posted by greeneyedleo
(I hope I misread you)

There are several free wireless networks, and it is nothing about stealing.

Some people are smart enough to know how to keep their data protected on open networks, and it doesn't require a highly protect network. The computer can encrypt data before it even sends it over an open network.

I'm surprised by this article just how much is still not being encrypted before it leaves the computer, period.

But I do share with some friends just a few houses next to me, different ISPs, both, always connected anyway, occaisionally we open one just to see who wants to come in. I just wanted to add what was allready presented:

Originally posted by Phage
So put a password on your router.
Oh, I see, you want to steal from your neighbor's connection. Ok then, passwords are bad.

Originally posted by Phage
reply to post by dzonatas

 

Oh, I see, you want to steal from your neighbor's connection. Ok then, passwords are bad.

Oh, I see, you just want to make dumb accusations because you never heard of free wifi networks.

reply to post by dzonatas

Sure I have. And if I'm using one I'm pretty careful about what I do with it.

But it's the same question. If you and your neighbors have an arrangement to share a connection, isn't it a pretty good idea to have access protected with a password? It's not too hard to let each other know what the password is, is it?



[edit on 5/21/2010 by Phage]

Originally posted by Solomons
They really don't help, right now if i look on connections i can get in my area most of my neighbors are WEP, easily hacked.

WEP based passwords are useless:

A paper recently published by Andreas Bittau, Mark Henley (both researching at the University College of London) and Joshua Lackey (Microsoft) describes a new, devastating attack. (Download their research paper here: www.cs.ucl.ac.uk... ) The new attack relies on packet fragmentation and use of the known 8-byte LLC/SNAP headers to speed up decryption.

Basically it is so efficient it renders WEP useless. Totally useless.

Source: Alexander Holy's Weblog, MSDN

There are better ways to protect a network.

reply to post by dzonatas


I'm sorry to cut in again, but the only legal free(-intended) connections I know are not civilian-based.