Another Day, Another Personal Data Security Concern

It appears as though Google Street View cars were collecting more than photos and geographic data as they cruised down your street. When German authorities asked Google to divulge the data it had collected, Google revealed that it's cars had "been mistakenly collecting samples of payload data from open networks". This means that if you were surfing on an open/unsecured wireless network as the Street View car drove past, you may have been providing Google with parts of an email, text, photographs or the website you were viewing. Google claims that the problem dates back to 2006 when "an engineer working on an experimental wi-fi project wrote a piece of code that sampled all categories of publicly broadcast wi-fi data". 

Guess they thought that they'd just leave it in there until somebody noticed! Sorry Google but I find it a little hard to believe that this went totally unnoticed. 

Source: BBC News

British Firm Loses Thousands Of Prisoners Data On Memory Stick

In another case of lost or stolen data, the British government is investigating the loss of a memory stick loaded with unencrypted personal data on thousands of prisoners, including names, addresses and release dates. The data was said to have been housed securely but an external contractor apparently loaded it onto a memory stick which has since gone missing.

"This was data that was being held in a secure form, but was downloaded onto a memory stick by an external contractor," Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said.

"It runs against the rules set down both for the holding of government data and set down by the external contractor and certainly set down in the contract that we had with the external contractor."

BBC story.