14 DAY TRIAL // Google has been given the go-ahead to delete the personal WiFi data it collected with its Street View cars in the UK. The company was investigated twice by the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) and found guilty of breaching the privacy of UK citizens by storing emails, passwords and other sensitive data. However, finding that no real damage was done by the act, no fines were imposed.
The company will delete the data from the UK in the next nine months the Information Commissioner Christopher Graham said. The ICO also said that there will no further investigations of the data.
However, UK authorities have reached an agreement with Google for the company to revise its internal policies and institute several changes to ensure that this sort of thing doesn't happen again.
Google already detailed some of the measures it would undertake about a month ago, before the second investigation in the UK. It's unclear which, if any, new measures Google agreed to in its negotiations with UK authorities.
Google has said that all of its engineers will have more privacy-related training and that all of its products will have a mandatory privacy design document.
The Information Commissioner's Office came under criticism after its first investigation found no personal data had been captured by Street View cars.
However, when investigators in other countries revealed that Google had indeed stored emails, URLs, passwords and so on, the UK authorities started a second investigation that found similar data to what the others had found.
Still, some are saying that tougher measures should have been taken against Google especially since there was no fine.
UK authorities will audit the company in August 2011 to see if the measures it has agreed to have been implemented. The company is still under investigation in several other countries.