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Google WIFI Spying for 4 years = EVIL

lyons238

Android Enthusiast
May 21, 2010
251
19
i suspected this. i read somewhere google is trying to take over the world. think about it, they basically control the internet, and now our cell phones too? you can only imagine what other information they have about us that we dont know about. its scary, but hopefully our laws will keep companies like google in check with morals.
 
UNBELIEVABLE

Google admitted in a blog post Friday that it has been snooping on Wi-Fi users as its Street View cars have been riding around neighborhoods throughout the world collecting data for its mapping service.

In a blog post, the company said it has parked its Street View cars and stopped collecting data after it realized that it has been inadvertently collecting data about people's online activities from unsecured Wi-Fi networks over the past four years.

Google, come clean on Wi-Fi spying | Relevant Results - CNET News

Google's Wi-Fi Spying: What Were They Thinking? - PCWorld

Google: Oops, We Spied on Your Wi-Fi - Tech Talk - CBS News

Keeping your wifi unsecured is like not locking the door to your house, you deserve what happens next.
 
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It's ridiculously easy to hop onto an unsecured network by accident. Some idiot near me has an unsecured network and from time to time when my laptop doesn't feel like connecting to my wifi, it hops onto the idiot's network. I only notice because the internet slows to a crawl.

Point being: people should secure their networks. Google probably hopped onto those networks by mistake.
 
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I live in a Condo, I get at last count 18 networks my laptop can see out of those 8 are unsecured and out of that for two years now 3 have never been secured or name changed etc, I could log into those and download music etc and no one would never know. amazing this day an age people still do not use some sort of security on their home network.
 
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just because their WIFI is unsecure doesn't mean Google has the right to invade their WIFI and start sniffing data without the owners knowledge.

Please, leaving your network unsecured and then complaining about it is like putting a billboard in your front lawn with a message for you spouse and then getting pissed when your neighbors see it. People need to grow up and take some personal responsibility. This is just a bunch of hate mongers/free loaders trying to make much ado about nothing.

I have not heard of anyone with any concrete damages surrounding this issue. Where are the leaked juicy emails collected by google and published for a buck. I want to see pictures! Until then, if your network is broadcasting your business to everyone then you need to read your router manual and secure your D**M network.

Next these people will turn around and sue the router manufacturers for allowing unsecured network. Oh wait, yeah, they already did that. I guess they can do it again.

Hey, they've got satellite imagery of everyones house and they've had it for years. Let sue them because, ah , hell, I don't know, just because!
 
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I actually did a research paper during my last year in college on wifi security. The very act of accessing someone's wifi network without consent is illegal, whether its secured or not.

But that's more aimed at war driving than anything else.

It's kind of a gray area. There are laws about "unauthorized access to a computer network", but on the other hand WiFi uses unlicensed public airwaves. I think WiFi router makers should stop having open network options on the lower class devices... the only people that need open networks are businesses which (usually) buy higher class business line devices.

just because their WIFI is unsecure doesn't mean Google has the right to invade their WIFI and start sniffing data without the owners knowledge.

Have you never saw your laptop switch to an open network because yours was acting funny? Has happened to me and at least a few others here. Doesn't mean Google was listening in on anything, just that they picked it up and recorded it. You have to remember that the vehicle is moving, so it can't really listen to anything of value... especially when it's listening to and recording all the wifi SSIDs it finds.
 
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i suspected this. i read somewhere google is trying to take over the world. think about it, they basically control the internet, and now our cell phones too? you can only imagine what other information they have about us that we dont know about. its scary, but hopefully our laws will keep companies like google in check with morals.
just because their WIFI is unsecure doesn't mean Google has the right to invade their WIFI and start sniffing data without the owners knowledge.

I just love these trollish kind of posts. Please don't elaborate on the news, just give us a sentence and make a proclamation. Yes google screwed up here big time. should they have been collecting IP data? HELL NO. Are they in trouble for that little stunt? it seems like they will be. Still does that make them EVIL?
drevil.gif


In fact all these complaints and whining about how much personal information google collects about users is an argument I find rather silly. Other than instances in which google's security has been breached, and the very small handful of incidents in which google (and yahoo) was forced to release information to a government and that government used it to go after someone, please name a single instance you are aware of in which google has intentionally used any information it collects on users to negatively target them? So they direct personalized advertising your way. at least they do it discretely and not like the spam or pop-ups that used to plague sites not so long ago (or is your memory of AOL and Yahoo advertising that short?).

If anything from what I've been able to observe of google over the years is a surprising level of restraint and competence, which is more that can be said for many tech companies, let alone people. To echo what many have already said, if you are not going to practice appropriate basic computer and internet security, then you deserve whatever you get.
 
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I actually did a research paper during my last year in college on wifi security. The very act of accessing someone's wifi network without consent is illegal, whether its secured or not.

But that's more aimed at war driving than anything else.

What sources did you use? I'd be curious to read up on this.

Although, isn't it up for debate whether or not an open network constitutes consent?
 
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I'm pretty sure blacksheep is correct. However, is this what Google is accuse do doing? I was under the impression that they were accused of recording the IPs (and possibly cross referencing them with actual physical addresses). If that's the case, and since even a locked wifi connection provides the current IP address cycling through it, assuming google knows the exact date and time of when the record took place, they could make a nice little database of IP specific locales. the problem I see with that is that most people using a wireless router these days are probably also using a broadband connection, and in the overwhelming majority of cases, those connections use dynamic IP's, so while the information would be useful for google, it would be of no use for anyone else - since google would not have any new IP's that cycled through a modem after the fact.
 
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somewhere some company had an awesome catch phrase...what was it...oh yeah..don't be evil.


So how does the fact that Google turned themselves in fit into this? Nobody forced them to admit what they had done, they fessed up on their own. How many other companies can you name that did something wrong and made that mistake public without having their arm twisted by someone else?

I'm sorry, if you're using unsecured wifi you have absolutely no expectation of privacy.
 
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