Last April, Google found itself in hot water after it was discovered that its Google Street View cars had inadvertently gathered personal information from WiFi networks as it canvassed streets.
Today, the Canadian government found that the company had breached privacy laws.
Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart told the CBC that “Google did capture personal information – and, in some cases, highly sensitive personal information such as complete e-mails.” Stoddart went on to call the incident “a serious violation of Canadiens’ privacy rights.”
According to the article, information included email addresses, user names, passwords, names and telephone numbers, addresses and even health details. Google has until February 1 to delete all of the information.
A report by Stoddart found that a Google engineer was responsible for the inadvertent collection of personal data when the engineer failed to follow company procedures involving legal review of code.
