German authorities said Monday they had fined Google for illegally collecting massive amounts of personal data including emails, passwords and photos while setting up its disputed Street View service.
The data protection office in the northern city of Hamburg said it had slapped the US Internet giant with a €145,000 penalty for privacy violations on what it called a nearly unprecedented scale.
It found that while specially equipped Google vehicles took city snapshots between 2008 and 2010 for its Street View function, which supplements its standard map service, they had also picked up data from unsecured wireless networks.
"Among the information gathered in the drive-bys were significant amounts of personal data of varying quality. For example emails, passwords, photos and chat protocols were collected," the Hamburg authorities said in a statement.
"In my opinion this case constitutes one of the biggest known data protection violations in history," said the office's chief, Johannes Caspar. Full story...
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The data protection office in the northern city of Hamburg said it had slapped the US Internet giant with a €145,000 penalty for privacy violations on what it called a nearly unprecedented scale.
It found that while specially equipped Google vehicles took city snapshots between 2008 and 2010 for its Street View function, which supplements its standard map service, they had also picked up data from unsecured wireless networks.
"Among the information gathered in the drive-bys were significant amounts of personal data of varying quality. For example emails, passwords, photos and chat protocols were collected," the Hamburg authorities said in a statement.
"In my opinion this case constitutes one of the biggest known data protection violations in history," said the office's chief, Johannes Caspar. Full story...
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