Google, Personal Data | featured news

Google has been fined by German data regulators after it admitted illegally recording information from unsecured wi-fi networks.

Google announced a new feature today: the innocuously named "Inactive Account Manager." "Not a great name, we know," writes product manager Andreas Tuerk in a public policy blog post that explains that the feature is a way for Google users to tell Google what to do with their digital assets when they kick the bucket.

U.S. authorities are leading the charge as governments around the world pepper Google with more demands to remove online content and turn over information about people using its Internet search engine, YouTube video site and other services.

Last Thursday, Microsoft announced several new features to the upcoming IE10, which will launch as part of Windows 8. One of these features, which turns on “Do Not Track” by default, has caused quite a stir over the weekend as new outlets and bloggers have discussed the potential benefits and ramifications of this feature.

A Google engineer knowingly created software that would collect sensitive personal information about people without their knowledge, according to an un-redacted version of a federal investigative report.

On Thursday, Google's much-discussed new privacy policy goes into effect.

Google’s announcement that it is sharing more user data across its services has already raised the hackles of privacy advocates, technology writers and at least one national data-protection agency.

The U.S. government obtained a controversial type of secret court order to force Google Inc. and small internet provider Sonic.net Inc. to turn over information from the email accounts of a WikiLeaks volunteer.

When law enforcement comes looking for evidence hidden in your Google search history, Gmail or the uncountable other Google services that touch many Internet users’ lives, don’t expect Google to turn the investigators away. In 19 out of 20 cases in the second half of last year, the company handed over at least some of the data the government demanded.

Google admitted in a blog post Friday that external regulators have discovered that e-mails, URLs and passwords were collected and stored in a technical while the vehicles for Google's Street View service were out documenting roadway locations.