Giant Google made a mistake a little while ago, acknowledged the mistake and the management maturely apologized for its mistake. Ironically, while some countries have asserted the company's act was illegal, Google has maintained that it didn't break any laws.
What really happened?
In May, one of Google's engineers had created a program that vacuumed up potentially sensitive personal information, including e-mails and passwords, from unsecure wireless networks while Google cars cruised neighborhoods around the world. The cruise was primarily for Google's online mapping service. But they, reportedly, also carried an equipment to log the location of Wi-Fi networks.
According to a report by Canada Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart late last month, the incident was caused by: "an engineer's careless error as well as lack of controls to ensure that necessary procedures to protest privacy were followed."
Consequently, the leading search engine is tightening its privacy leash on employees in an effort to ensure that they don't intrude on people while Google collects and stores information about its users.
How? According to a report by Yahoo, Google said that it will require all 23,000 of its employees to undergo privacy training. The company is also introducing more checks aimed at making sure workers are obeying the rules.
"We are mortified by what happened, but confident that these changes to our processes and structure will significantly improve our internal privacy and security practices for the benefits of all our users."
Alan Eustace, Google head engineer.
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