France fines Google €100,000 over Street View

Matthew DeCarlo

Posts: 5,271   +104

France's National Commission for Information Freedom (CNIL) has nailed Google with a €100,000 ($142,000) fine for gathering private data from unsecured Wi-Fi connections. Early last year, the search giant revealed that its Street View cars accessed unpassworded wireless networks and "inadvertently" collected data, including emails and passwords according to an initial French investigation.

Google has reportedly received the largest fine served by CNIL since it gained the power to issue financial penalties 2004, according to regulator Yann Padova. That said, €100,000 pales in comparison to the billion dollar fines incurred by Intel and Microsoft in Europe. In addition to the cash punishment, CNIL has asked Google to erase all the private data, which the company is pleased to do.


"Deleting the data has always been our priority, and we're happy the CNIL has given permission for us to do so," said Google's privacy lawyer. "As we have said before, we are profoundly sorry for having mistakenly collected payload data from unencrypted WiFi networks." This news comes as the Berlin State Supreme Court court approves of Google Street View in a landmark decision.

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CNIL should spend that 100k now to fine every person with an unsecured network 100Eu!!

Honestly they are the real "criminals" here enabling spammers and such.
 
krayzie said:
why does google need this information?

They don't it was "inadvertent" >.>

Btw, that botnet client on your desktop, yeah that one, please ignore it. K thx.

sigh...
 
I don't follow how is google at fault because the french users are dumbasses and can't secure their own networks?
 
LionVibez said:
I don't follow how is google at fault because the french users are dumbasses and can't secure their own networks?

Well hater, its not like they sniffed whit malicious software to obtain passwords, emails and such information, connecting to a wifi spot is one thing doing "sniffing" on that network is another thing.
 
$142,000? lol, the attorney's fees are several times more than that... I wonder how Google will ever be able to pay that off?
 
140.000 $ !!!!! that's not even wourth a spot in a newspaper, come onnnnn!!! that's probably the cost of 1 camera on one of those cars!
 
Guest said:
140.000 $ !!!!! that's not even wourth a spot in a newspaper, come onnnnn!!! that's probably the cost of 1 camera on one of those cars!

Actually Google uses several different cameras, though the most expensive model is likely to cost twice that amount...
 
Come on this has been done before they got sued for the same thing in the UK last year and they won

Waste of court time if you ask me
 
The French law says don't do this and Google did it, so they pay, done deal.
 
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