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
