We all know that Google Street View cars collect much more than just roadways photos. It was later revealed that the street view cars collected personal payload data from unencrypted wifi networks to check for and tag collected data by location.

In short, if you are sending an email from an unencrypted wifi network and a Google Street View car passes buy, there is a good chance the car has collected a copy of your email too. Germany was the first one to speak against this and reveal the matter of personal data collection, something even Google did not know!

Now, Google has called this a mistake and has said,

It’s now clear that we have been mistakenly collecting samples of payload data from open (i.e. non-password-protected) WiFi networks, even though we never used that data in any Google products.

Google is making serious amendments to make thing right and is starting by coming clean about what happened. This will gain it some trust and help it mend the tainted image it has created for itself in some countries.

Google has also revealed plans to switch to an encrypted version of Google search and has already put an end to Google Street View Cars.

(Via: eWeek)