Google on Friday said that it collected entire e-mails, URLs, and passwords when its Street View cars accidentally sniffed unencrypted Wi-Fi networks.
While most of the data collection was "fragmentary, in some instances entire e-mails and URLs were captured, as well as passwords," Alan Eustace, senior vice president of engineering and research at Google, wrote in a blog post.
Eustace said the company is "mortified" by what happened and wants "to delete this data as soon as possible."
Initially, Google said it "collected only fragments of payload data" because the company had not yet analyzed the collected information in detail. Since then a number of external regulators have inspected the data as part of their investigations, at which point the e-mails, URLs, and passwords were discovered.
Actually, the main reason for this is that the VAST majority of wireless internet users do not use wireless router encrypted protection (WEP or WPA for example) and just hook up the router and use the default settings. This leaves it wide open to anyone who wants to log in to it and use the network.
And that is too bad, because protecting your network is as easy as putting a password on your computer.