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Google was snooping in your wifi!

Some engineer at Google wrote some code that would allow the Google street view cars to grab personal information out of unprotected wifi.

BBC News - Google staff 'knew of wi-fi snooping', report says

Quote:

The Google engineer who wrote a program that collected personal data from wi-fi networks told at least two other colleagues, a report has revealed.

Google released the full investigation conducted by the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

It said senior staff on the Street View team were unaware of the plans.

The company was fined $25,000 (£15,300) earlier this month for impeding the FCC's investigation, but was ruled to not have broken the law.

The report came two weeks after a heavily redacted version was released by the FCC at the time of the original fine.

It detailed how one Google engineer, referred to only as "Engineer Doe", produced a computer program capable of collecting data from people's unsecured home wireless networks.

The data gathered included contents of some emails and web browsing history.

Who is so stupid to not password protect the wifi?

I live on a private street of 25 homes in a HOA. Once while walking the dog, I used my iPhone to see who had unprotected WiFi. I think about 1/3 of them did. I sent the HOA an email, and a few weeks later there were still a few unprotected.

Quote:

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera (Post 6722428)

Who is so stupid to not password protect the wifi?

I think a lost of (if not most) people just don't know, and I think service providers were installing systems without security enabled.

Quote:

Originally Posted by widebody911 (Post 6722530)

I think a lost of (if not most) people just don't know, and I think service providers were installing systems without security enabled.

My excuse is laziness.
My last system came unprotected and I was just too lazy to go to the trouble of setting it up. My new system came with a password that I had to change and then, if I really really wanted it open, I had to take steps to turn it off. In that case it was easier to use the password.

this sounds like they did evil to me

My parents wifi is unprotected..... But they live far enough off a rural road, that it can't be picked up...

These days, internet access costs a lot more than a $13/monthly phone bill and Netzero.
Still not much faster, either...
Neighbors can share the costs, or people can act socialist if they want to. Not much different from the free WiFi provided by the coffee house.

Scanning for open access nodes is the same as "war driving", but on a huge scale by a major corporation.
=Legal, but evil.

"The data gathered included contents of some emails and web browsing history".
=Felony hacking, and jail.