Googles "prying" streetview cars (MAC ADDY'S & SSID's from wireless networks

[MR GUS]

Source Bitterwallet: , a great cynical view on the world
Google have become involved in a mild skirmish with the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office over what they get up to in their roaming Street View Cars.

Last week, it emerged that German Street View cars had been collecting MAC addresses and SSIDs from residents’ wireless networks. Google admitted that their UK cars are also doing the same thing, causing the ICO to rouse itself and demand a bit of an explanation.

Naturally, it’s all perfectly innocent. Google explained that… “The data which we collect is used to provide location-based services within Google products and to users of the Geolocation API. For example, users of Google Maps for Mobile can turn on ‘My Location’ to identify their approximate location based on cell towers and Wi-Fi access points which are visible to their device.” All good, innocent fun then.

But, if you’re worried, Google have reiterated that they don’t pick up any transmissions from your router . And don’t forget, “the operator of the access point can choose to restrict the SSID from broadcast, and in many cases this will mean that the SSID is not received” bleated their communiqué.

So if you see a Google Street View car parked up, it possibly means that the driver has discovered an unsecured network and is downloading the latest episode of Glee or True Blood on to his laptop. Or possibly not.

Google – it’s becoming increasingly easy to hate them isn’t it?

[myozone]

I told my router not to broadcast my SSID...


Some software scanners can still 'see' it though.......

[djh]

Naturally, it’s all perfectly innocent.

It may be innocent but is it legal? They're still intercepting radio communications without authorization, aren't they?

Google – it’s becoming increasingly easy to hate them isn’t it?

Does anybody else experience problems with google maps of late? For a month or two now I've been getting grey squares on maps saying "we don't have the data". Of course they do. Usually if I zoom in it appears at higher resolution, or if I try later it'll be there. I guess it's a bug in their caching; some over-eager timeout or something.

Last night I had a really weird one. I clicked on the 'link' link to get a URL for what I was looking at and it popped up and then disappeared; what was in the browser's URL bar changed; it switched from full map to half map-half text; and then displayed an advert for their chrome browser! It's very tempting to believe that they're deliberately breaking the display on other browsers to increase penetration of their own 

Of course, that can't be the case. They're such nice chaps, after all.

[Amy]

When I was a kid, my paranoid stepdad had a poster on the back of his office door about big brother.
It said something about big brother is watching you.
He knows youve got it
He wants it, ....blah blah, he wont stop till hes got it, .......

Of course I didnt know what it meant, all I knew was he was away with the conspiracy theorists and was convinced the 'Viet Taff' were listening to his phone calls and reading his mail.
Every saturday morning I had to burn all office rubbish and make sure the ask was trampled into the ground.

That was c 1972.

Maybe Orwell was right, maybe 'Soilent Green' will be coming to a lifetime near us soon


Maybe we shall all know it by the name of GO OGGLE

[Pat_]

Amy, I think you'll find that 'Soylent Green' was Harry Harrison.

[Amy]

Amy, I think you'll find that 'Soylent Green' was Harry Harrison.

Im sure it was Pat, the point im making is that science fiction is fast in danger of becoming fact, if indeed it hasnt already.

Remember all the gadgets james bond had 30-40 years ago, we now have them. Same for the stuff on star treck, the flip phones and medical gizmos.

[northern installer]

beware:google streetmap=burglars gazette

[djh]

beware:google streetmap=burglars gazette

Anybody for a life-sized photo of a rottweiler to prop up by your front door?

[shiela_robins]

Google – it’s becoming increasingly easy to hate them isn’t it?

... and increasingly easy to love them at the same time too.  I must admit they seem to be transforming into Micro$oft though I hope it won't continue that route. 

[mespilus]

Well it is possible that they took the same bet on the
2010 election as Murdoch:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Whetstone

http://www.google.co.uk/corporate/execs.html#whetstone

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Hilton

[KenB]

An interesting point of how large corporations seek to further pervade our lifestyles.

Google had a major crash last May resulting in an outage of several hours.  

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/5326243/Google-crash-hits-millions-of-internet-users.html


Some comments at the time were on the lines of "the Internet is dead without Google"

So dependent is the netspace on Google products - that large chunks fall apart when Google goes down.

So to summarise - the internet is google, and google is the internet.   (Lots may disagree - but you try doing without Google for a while, Google's there to find the webpages or documents that you have forgotten to bother to bookmark).

So Google has become a mega-corporate presence in cyberspage, just like Tesco has a mega-presence in retail space.  

Google makes about $2 billion profit a quarter, from just 20,000 employees  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8623881.stm

Tesco also makes a lot of profit, but with 260,000 UK employees, they are the largest UK private sector employer.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1548956/Tesco-in-numbers.html


Is this the way that the 21st Century is going to play out?  We become wholly reliant on a few giant global corporations for everything that we need?


Ken

[mespilus]

Hmmm,

I seem to remember that the corporate entity that we 'see' as Google UK
is domiciled for tax purposes elsewhere, (Ireland?),
so completely avoiding any UK Corporation tax.

A sum of £400M avoided iirc.