Google has admitted that its Street View cars picked up private emails and passwords while scanning wireless connections, forcing the ICO to reconsider taking action.
Google sent out its Street View camera cars with Wi-Fi scanning equipment earlier this year, inadvertently, it says, picking up data being sent over the connections.
In May, Google said the data was so fragmented it couldn't be pieced together, but has now admitted that examinations of the collected data by "external regulators" has shown that's not the case.
"It’s clear from those inspections that while most of the data is fragmentary, in some instances entire emails and URLs were captured, as well as passwords," wrote Alan Eustace, senior vice president of engineering and research, in a post on the Google blog.
"We want to delete this data as soon as possible, and I would like to apologise again for the fact that we collected it in the first place," he said, adding the company was "mortified" by what had happened.
This article originally appeared at pcpro.co.uk
