Google allows Wi-Fi ID opt out after EU watchdog pressure

Google uses unique identifiers of networks to help work out where mobile users who are connected to that network are. It said that it was allowing an opt-out to this system for network owners after pressure from European data protection watchdogs.

Google said that it used information about where users are based to improve their services but that it believed allowing the opt-out would improve privacy.

"Even though the wireless access point signals we use in our location services don't identify people, we think we can go further in protecting people's privacy," said the company's global privacy counsel Peter Fleischer in a blog post.

"At the request of several European data protection authorities, we are building an opt-out service that will allow an access point owner to opt out from Google's location services. Once opted out, our services will not use that access point to determine users' locations," Fleischer said.

Earlier this year the French privacy regulator fined Google €100,000 after it said the company was collecting Wi-Fi user data without users' knowledge. The regulator ruled that Google had invaded the privacy of smartphone users by collecting data about them without their consent.

The French National Commission for Information Technologies and Civil Liberties (CNiL) said Google had failed to meet the demands it placed on the company in May 2010 when it told it to stop collecting details of users' Wi-Fi networks and content that passed over them

The regulator had initially acted against Google after discovering that camera-carrying cars used to take pictures for Google's Street View mapping service had collected the location of network information. It later emerged that the cars also collected some of the information passing over the networks, including usernames, passwords and entire emails.

In November 2010 the UK's data protection watchdog the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) decided not to fine Google for its unauthorised collection of personal data by Street View cars despite finding that the company's activity was "a significant breach of the Data Protection Act".

Google signed an undertaking to improve its data protection practices and agreed to let the ICO conduct an audit of its privacy policies and activities. In August the ICO reported that it was "reasonably assured" with what it found.