So I’m a little late to the party, but things have been crazy.
For the past few months there have been news stories about how the Google Street View cars were also intercepting and analyzing people’s Wi-Fi signal as it drove by their house.
Many privacy advocates are freaking out about this. I mean c’mon, the search engine giant is going around and sniffing packets right out of thin air. All their passwords and credit card numbers (when paying bills and such) are being exposed so the big, evil Google can take and do whatever it wants with it!
Two words. Bull crap.
While I cannot begin to speculate what exactly Google actually meant to do with this information (though, they now argue a rogue engineer put the code to capture the network data), it’s total bull crap to fault Google with privacy violations. The data that Google was actually pulling out of thin air was data being broadcasted from unsecured routers. Yup, that’s right. People are tossing their data out into the airwaves without a problem and call foul when that information is intercepted.
This is like having a private conversation using two way walkie talkies with your girlfriend down the street, and being upset and morally offended that anyone dare listen in. You’re not securing the data between endpoints. You are making a public broadcast. If you make a public broadcast, that broadcast is obviously available to the public.
People who are concerned about having Google intercepting passwords and credit card numbers need to take some personal responsibility. First off, you should NOT be entering your password or credit card number on any website that is not using SSL. Plain and simple. If the website is using SSL, your network being open is entirely moot because that data is encrypted between endpoints, so if some malicious hacker, or the “evil” Google gets it, they just see gibberish.
Secondly, those privacy advocates that are all up in arms about Google “stealing” all of people’s information they are deliberately making public… they should be more focused on educating the technologically inept individuals on the 5-or-6 click process of adding a WPA key to one’s router. I mean, people, c’mon, it’s not like it’s expensive (it’s freakin’ free!) to add a WPA key. Not only does it keep your information from being broadcast without a layer of security, but it also prevents criminals from being able to use your wi-fi for their own agenda.
Yeah, that’s right. I said it. People need to take responsibility themselves of their own network. This is the time of GUI. Graphic User Interface. Everything has shiny, clearly labeled buttons and tabs. There’s no advanced command line that only geeks can do. Nope. Log in to your router’s admin panel, go to security, click add WPA key. Type one in. Submit. Done.
As far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing criminal going on here. All these states can investigate Google all they want for “data theft.” They can waste all of our hard-earned tax-dollars going on a wild-goose chase and ultimately put Google in a kangaroo court just to prove to the people that the government “cares about its people and not megacorporations.” But it doesn’t change the fact that people have willingly and deliberately allowed their data to be viewable by anyone with a wireless network interface card.
If anything, let this serve as an example to those technologically inept people that this is the exact reason why you should secure your data. I’m sure Google as a corporation has no use for your private IM conversations or your hotmail password. But a malicious hacker or someone holding a grudge against you might.
Lock down your network. Take responsibility for your actions and inactions. Breathe. Stop using Google as a scapegoat.
Related posts:
- Google 411 This is a pretty amazing service. And it’s free!… To everyone! Let’s say that I need to get a number of a pizza joint near here. I just call 1-800-GOOG-411 (1-800-466-4411), say my city and state. Then i can either … Continue reading →...
- Google Voice [Semi-]Released! Google has just announced the release/rolling out of Google Voice. Expectantly they are slowly rolling it out to people who’ve requested an invite previously. I don’t know how long it will take for me receive an invite, but I’m super … Continue reading →...
- Google Voice At A Glance Well, not exactly a glance. I’ve had it a few weeks now and think it’s great. When I got my invited it was, of course, almost midnight and I was literally about to sign off. I actually set up a … Continue reading →...
- Google’s Malware Labeling Slipup – People’s Lack Of Common Sense So this Saturday, there was a relatively huge slip-up/oopsies done by Google. They updated their definition file that contains a list of potentially bad sites that host malware and somehow (by human error) a single ‘/’ get entered as an … Continue reading →...
- Two Great New Google/G-Mail Labs Features How many times have you said something like “Okay so-and-so, I am attaching this week’s productivity report.”… but then you forget to actually attach. The person replies with “wtf?” and you feel like a total moron. Google has just rolled … Continue reading →...
