Google has agreed to offer more privacy training to its staff after it was discovered that the corporation had illegally collected private information from unsecured wireless networks through its Wi-Fi system. The information collected will also be deleted as soon as possible.

The Hamburg Data Authority had been doing a regular audit when it stumbled upon this violation of privacy laws.

There has been a clamour for the company to be slapped with a fine but David Smith, Deputy Information Commissioner said that there were no grounds for such an action since the collected data had not been shared or used inappropriately.

The nature of the breach of the privacy law by the search-engine corporation was investigated by several quarters including the UK and Canada. The latter was by far, the most detailed of these investigations and reported that personal data of a vast variety including medical conditions had been garnered by Google. Jennifer Stoddart, the Canadian Privacy Commissioner stressed that a wide majority of people had been affected by the breach, which was significantly serious.

The release of the Canadian report by the Canadian High Commission led the ICO to reclassify the nature of the breach from ‘no significant breach’ to a ‘significant breach’. Mr. Smith said that the ICO’s final verdict was based on the findings of those who had carried out investigations in the matter.

However, the executive director of ‘The Open Rights Group’, a digital advocacy initiative, said that the fact that the ICO did not carry out any independent investigations was appalling. He stresses the importance of giving the commission more authority as well as technical know-how.

Meanwhile, other companies are having ongoing investigations on their garnering of data through the use of Wi-Fi. Image Credit: