That WiFi password keeping your neighbor's kids from eating up your bandwidth? If a backed-up Android device has ever connected to it, according to a leading tech writer, Google's got its hot hands all over it.
In fact, Google might have just about every single WiFi password on the globe.
According to Michael Horowitz at ComputerWorld, a Technorati Top 100 listing in Gadgets and InfoTech, your devices litany of stored WiFi locations and passwords has been part and parcel of your phone's backups ever since the release of Android version 2.2. Not only that, the information is readable by Google, should they care to look.
With millions of Android users backing up to Google regularly and connecting to the protected WiFi signals of friends, family, businesses, events, etc., the ground's getting covered fairly rapidly. And handed over to the search giant on a daily basis.
Does Google care about your WiFi information? Doubtful, according to Horowitz; however, the information might be of use to law enforcement and the NSA, because it can allow immediate access of information shared over anyone's wireless network, as well as the ability to hack deeper into one's Internet connected machine.
Read Horowitz's piece, and decide for yourself if the information concerns you.
via Technology articles at Technorati http://feeds09.technorati.com/~r/tr-technology/~3/Kkqq5xfLoHc/