A German privacy regulator has fined Google for illegally recording signals from Wifi networks while it was taking photographs for its Street View service.
Google's roving Street View vans picked up large amounts of personal data such as e-mails, passwords, photos and online chat protocols, said the commissioner for data protection and freedom of information in Hamburg city state, Johannes Caspar.
Caspar fined Google 145,000 euros ($189,700), close to the maximum of 150,000 euros allowed under his mandate but a drop in the ocean for the top search engine provider, which has a stock market value of around $260 billion.
It was discovered that between 2008 and 2010, Google accessed insecure Wi-Fi networks with its Street View vehicles and illegally downloaded large quantities of personal data including emails, passwords and photos. The company has admitted wrongdoing and has since deleted the data from its servers. Regulators still aren’t satisfied, however.
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