Google has finally admitted that they will no longer use their Street View cars to snap up details of users' wi-fi networks that it passes along the way. Google had stated that they only used the data for geolocation tasks to show where a user was based.
However, they will continue to use some of their software that tracks you, such as My Location for similar tasks as well as using mobile phone data for the same thing.
The news that Google’s Street View cars was picking up user wi-fi data on its journeys caused outrage amongst privacy campaigners when details about it first leaked, despite Google saying that it wasn’t being used for malicious means. They did admit that the cars were mistakenly collecting samples of payload data from open wifi networks.
Google originally blamed the collection on an old piece of legacy code that had been used in its Street View cars that has now been removed.
CNet quoted Candian privacy commissioner Jennifer Stodart’s report on the incident as the source of the news. The report made note that Google no longer collects data and have no further plans to do so.
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