Google investigated over Wi-Fi privacy complaints
The UK's privacy watchdog has launched an investigation after Google admitted it had gathered sensitive information from unsecured household internet networks during its Street View project.
The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) said it would investigate after Google confirmed its Street View cars used to map the country at ground level had "mistakenly collected" emails, usernames and passwords from unsecured wireless connections.
The search giant's admission came after Canada's privacy commissioner found that the Street View cars had captured personal information.
The privacy concerns were first aired in May but at the time Google said the data gathered by its Street View cars' antennae was only "fragmentary".
In a statement on the company's blog, Google's vice-president of engineering and research, Alan Eustace, said: "We want to delete this data as soon as possible, and I would like to apologise again for the fact that we collected it in the first place.
"We are mortified by what happened, but confident that these changes to our processes and structure will significantly improve our internal privacy and security practices for the benefit of all our users."
An ICO spokesman told The Guardian: "Earlier this year the ICO visited Google's premises to make a preliminary assessment of the payload data it inadvertently collected while developing Google Street View. While the information we saw at the time did not include meaningful personal details that could be linked to an identifiable person, we have continued to liaise with, and await the findings of, the investigations carried out by our international counterparts."