Tuesday 26 October 2010

Say cheese and let me have your passwords

The story of Google getting into trouble about their "Street View" service, where cars mounted with cameras drive round the world to obtain pictures down your street, continues. Yesterday in the paper it was reported that our privacy watchdog is investigating them after it emerged that as they drove down your street taking photos of your house, they also collected emails, usernames and passwords from any unsecured computer network they found.

Is it me? If drove down a street and took photos, I couldn't possibly - 'inadvertently' or otherwise - have collected stuff like that. It's a CAMERA, for goodness sake!

OK, OK! I realise it's a high tech camera and it's probably streaming the images in real time to a remote mainframe (see, I know the jargon!). But even so. How can you 'inadvertently' collect AND save such stuff?

Their spokesman gave the usual catchphrases. They are "profoundly sorry", they are "strengthening privacy", "more training", "better procedures", etc., etc.

It all sounds worryingly familiar doesn't it?

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