Regarding [2], the sensationalized, alarmist way the media reported this was not remotely accurate, nor would the conspiracy theory angle on this story make any practical sense.
Google’s official statement admitted to collecting payload data from unsecured WiFi networks but said it was a mistake from including a library with extraneous code. [1]
The statement also linked to a third-party analysis of the relevant code which concluded: [2]
“Gslite is an executable program that captures, parses, and writes to disk 802.11 wireless frame data. In particular, it parses all frame header data and associates it with its GPS coordinates for easy storage and use in mapping network locations. The program does not analyze or parse the body of Data frames, which contain user content. The data in the Data frame body passes through memory and is written to disk in unparsed format if the frame is sent over an unencrypted wireless network, and is discarded if the frame is sent over an encrypted network.”
jazzyjackson|5 years ago
square_usual|5 years ago
9nGQluzmnq3M|5 years ago
divbzero|5 years ago
The statement also linked to a third-party analysis of the relevant code which concluded: [2]
“Gslite is an executable program that captures, parses, and writes to disk 802.11 wireless frame data. In particular, it parses all frame header data and associates it with its GPS coordinates for easy storage and use in mapping network locations. The program does not analyze or parse the body of Data frames, which contain user content. The data in the Data frame body passes through memory and is written to disk in unparsed format if the frame is sent over an unencrypted wireless network, and is discarded if the frame is sent over an encrypted network.”
[1]: https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/wifi-data-collection...
[2]: https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en...