Imagine you’re a 12 year old girl who doesn’t realize its laundry day. You slip to the kitchen to grab a quick snack and leave your journal open on your bed to the page that details everywhere you’ve been and everything you’ve thought done or said in the past week. On top of that it includes the combination to the journal that you usually guard carefully but figured would be perfectly safe for the few moments it takes to dash across the house, grab a bowl of cereal and get back.
At the same time your mom has finished folding the laundry and decided to deliver your fabric softener fresh frocks directly to your drawers. Having innocently entered your room with only the best intentions in mind she stumbles across your open journal and, not thinking, she assumes it’s an assignment for school. Now she’s accidentally read a large chunk of your inner monologue before realizing what she has done.
It might as well be the plot to any sitcom with a teenage girl ever written. Now change the mom to Street view vehicles and change the 12 year old to wireless internet users in more than 30 countries. That’s the scenario Google has been has been tangled in since May when they revealed that they had accidentally breached the privacy of people in global proportions. I’m not just saying that in the context of a preteen drama queen.
While collecting the images for Google maps, Street View cars also pinged Wi-Fi signals to note on their maps in order to help users locate and connect to hot spots. What they didn’t realize at the time was that the cars also collected any data being transferred on unsecured wireless networks as they passed. At first Google said it was just bits and fragments. However it was recently revealed that entire emails, search histories and passwords were some of the things that were acquired in the incident.
While countries like Ireland, Austria, Denmark and Hong Kong had Google erase the ill-gotten info immediately, others asked them to hold onto it while they investigate. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has called off its investigation of Google's "Street View" mapping program and is not going to fine the company for its error. The data has been segregated and secured but it has not been deleted yet. Google takes the whole thing as a learning experience and a reminder of how important privacy is in a world where we tend to share too much personal information on the internet.
"Google has made assurances to the FTC that the company has not used and will not use any of the payload data collected in any Google product or service, now or in the future," David C. Vladeck, the FTC's director for consumer protection, says in a letter to Google posted on the FTC's website. They feel they can assure consumers that it was a legitimate accidental snoop and no harm will come to them as a result. However I was a 12 year old girl once and my mom accidently stumbled on pages that contained my private thoughts. It was a long time before I felt I could trust her again.
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By Heather Fairchild - Heather is a multimedia developer, business owner and work-from-home mom.
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