France fines Google for collecting personal data over Street View
If there’s one thing Google can’t seem to stay out of, it’s trouble with authorities. If they’re not being hounded by China to censor their search results, they’re getting fined by the CNIL from France. CNIL is an independent French administrative authority that governs the data privacy laws in the country. According to the latest reports from BBC, Google has been fined $142,255 (100,000 Euro) for accidentally picking up personal data through its vehicles from open WiFi networks while collecting data for Google Street View. The information about the locations of the WiFi networks were supposed to help the location finding ability of Street View and other Google services, but according to the CNIL that analyzed the collected data, they found passwords, email messages and login names amongst the location information. Google has already stopped collecting data about WiFi networks, but it looks like they still have got the fine to settle.
