Privacy body to re-examine Google

Britain's privacy watchdog is to look again at what personal information internet giant Google gathered from private wi-fi networks.

The Information Commissioner's Office had investigated a sample earlier this year after it was revealed that Google had collected personal data during its Street View project, according to the BBC News.

At the time, it said no "significant" personal details were collected. But Google has since admitted that e-mails and passwords were copied.

On its official Google blog, senior vice president Alan Eustace wrote that the company was "mortified" to discover, after the initial investigation in May, that personal information had been collected.

Privacy watchdogs in numerous countries, including France, Germany and Canada, had also investigated the information.

"It's clear from those [external] inspections that while most of the data is fragmentary, in some instances entire e-mails and URLs were captured, as well as passwords," Mr Eustace wrote.

"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... changes to our processes and structure will significantly improve our internal privacy and security practices for the benefit of all our users."

A spokesman for the Information Commissioner's Office said it had kept an eye on international investigations since its own one concluded in July.

That investigation said that the information "did not include meaningful personal details that could be linked to an identifiable person".