2010 Porsche Panamera 4S

Editors' rating: 4 out of 5

The good: The dual-clutch transmission in the 2010 Porsche Panamera 4S works beautifully, contributing to driving dynamics and fuel economy, while the dynamic suspension leads to impressive cornering. Navigation includes 3D maps, and the Bose stereo produces a nicely refined sound.

The bad: Shifter buttons on the steering wheel are poorly placed. Driver aid features, such as blind spot detection and adaptive cruise control, are not available.

The bottom line: The 2010 Porsche Panamera delivers a spectacular driving experience in a surprisingly practical car, while modern cabin tech satisfies navigation and entertainment.

Price range: $93,800.00

http://reviews.cnet.com/sedan/2010-porsche-panamera-4s/4014-10865_7-34117508.html?tag=rtcol;txt

World Cup pushes Internet to new record

World Cup fever pushed the Internet to a new record on Friday, according to measurements from Akamai.

Traffic to news sites globally started a steady climb about 6 a.m. Eastern time and peaked six hours later at noon, reaching nearly 12.1 million visitors per minute.

The traffic dipped going into the afternoon but stayed well above normal. The figures suggest that the Internet was most active during the Mexico-South Africa game and stayed heavy through the France-Uruguay game.

The day's traffic far exceeded the previous record of 8.5 million visitors per minute, which was set when Barack Obama won the U.S. presidential election in 2008.

As of Saturday afternoon, Web traffic to news sites was still heavy at 5.7 million visitors per minute

Google's Chrome 'in retreat,' says Microsoft

- Internet Explorer (IE) gained browser usage share last month in the U.S., while major rivals Firefox and Chrome both lost ground, Microsoft said today, citing data from Web analytics firm Net Applications.

"This is an incredibly competitive space now, which is incredibly healthy," said Ryan Gavin, director of platform strategies for Microsoft. "But we're already seeing Chrome in retreat in the U.S."

According to Net Applications data not available to the general public, all versions of IE gained 0.76 of a percentage point in U.S. usage share last month, accounting for 63.27% of the browsers used in May. Firefox and Chrome, meanwhile, fell 0.24 and 0.45 of a percentage point, respectively, in the U.S. last month, ending with shares of 20.38% and 4.53%.

Net Applications confirmed that the data Gavin cited was accurate

But the growth of IE in the U.S. was not enough to offset its decline globally, where Microsoft gave up 0.26 of a percentage point to fall to a new low of 59.7%. Meanwhile, Google's Chrome and Opera Software's Norwegian-made Opera boosted their worldwide shares in May at the expense of IE and Mozilla's Firefox.

By May's end, Chrome accounted for 7.05% of the browsers that surfed to the 40,000 sites that Aliso Viejo, Calif.-based Net Applications monitors for clients. Opera increased its share by 0.13 of a percentage point, its largest increase in eight months, to 2.4%.

Chrome's increase of 0.3 of a percentage point was the browser's smallest gain since August 2009, and significantly off its three- and 12-month averages of nearly half a point.

Firefox, on the other hand, was again down last month, sliding 0.24 of a percentage point to 24.35% worldwide, marking the fourth time in the last six months that the browser's share slipped. In March and April, Firefox gained back some of the ground it had lost since November 2009, but May's decline cost Mozilla most of the growth it had fought for during the two-month stretch. Firefox now stands at about the same share it had in January.

Once considered a lock to hit and then move beyond the 25% bar, Firefox has yet to reach that milestone. In April, Vince Vizzaccaro, a Net Applications executive vice president, said that Firefox was "just holding steady" and explained that gains that had once come its way were instead being gobbled by Google's Chrome.

Microsoft disputed that Chrome is grabbing share.

"IE8 continues to lead in user choice," Gavin argued. "It grew 2.5 times faster than any competitor." He arrived at the two-and-a-half times figure by comparing IE8's global increase of 0.81 of a percentage point with Chrome's growth of 0.32 of a percentage point.

IE8 closed May with 35.38% of the U.S. browser usage share, making it the most-used browser in the country. Microsoft's IE7 was second, with 16.75%, said Vizzaccaro, while Mozilla's Firefox 3.6 was third with 13%. Google's best showing was at No. 8, where Chrome 4.1 accounted for 3.52%. Chrome 5.0, which just shifted out of beta into what Google dubs its "stable channel," owned 0.76% of the usage market.

5 reasons to upgrade to Apple's Safari 5

Although it wasn't mentioned during Apple CEO Steve Jobs' keynote address Monday at WWDC, Apple launched an updated version of its Safari Web browser for Mac OS X 10.5.8 and 10.6.2 or higher, as well as Windows XP SP2 or higher, Vista, and Windows 7. With the new release, Apple patched security holes, boosted performance, and introduced a handful of features that collectively have the potential to put Safari on par with Chrome and Firefox in terms of core features and performance.

But what will matter most to users are the following five new or updated features.

Browser extensions
The most significant addition to Safari is — finally! — support for browser extensions. For a lot of users, browser extensions may seem like a non-event. It's true that other browsers — Firefox, Chrome, and IE all come to mind — have supported extensions for so long that switching to one of those browsers from Safari could easily overwhelm you with the sheer number of extensions available.


The new Extensions pane in Safari's preferences.
Extensions may not seem like a big deal, but it's important because it shows Apple is finally keeping pace with rival browser-makers. That doesn't mean it's letting developers run rampant, however. Extensions will be sandboxed to keep them from gaining unfettered access to Safari itself or to other portions of a user's computer or data.

Apple also requires that extensions be digitally signed, similar to what's required for mobile apps in the App Store. That's to ensure an extension hasn't been altered by a third party and that any updates come from the original developer.

Extensions can be written with standard Web technologies — HTML, CSS and JavaScript — just as extensions are built for Firefox and Chrome. Apple has already provided a tool called Extension Builder to make it easy to package, distribute and install extensions. And through its free Safari Developer Program, which also provides resources for developing iPhone/iPad Web apps, developers can register for a digital signature to go with their extensions.

As of yet, only a few extensions are available on the Web, which isn't surprising given that Safari 5 was just released. As developers join the Safari Developer Program and create extensions, Apple will begin adding them to a Web-based gallery. In the meantime, a Tumblr blog is already listing extensions. (It can be followed on Twitter.)

One annoyance about Apple's implementation is that extensions are disabled by default. To enable them, you must use Safari's preferences to enable the Develop menu (there's a checkbox on the Advanced tab), then click on the Develop menu and select Enable Extensions .

apple's safari 5 free download :

Apple's Safari 5 takes speed prize on Mac, Windows

Others disagree, say Apple's new browser slower than rivals Chrome, Opera

Apple's new Safari 5 browser is the fastest browser on both Windows and Mac OS X, JavaScript benchmark tests show.

According to tests run by Computerworld, Safari 5, which Apple launched late Monday, renders JavaScript 27% faster than the nearest competitor on the Mac, and 11% faster than the second-place browser on Windows.

Safari dethrowned the speed kings from Google and Opera Software to take the top spot in the time trials.

On Monday, Apple touted Safari 5's increased speed, claiming that the browser's Nitro JavaScript engine is "up to 30% faster than Safari 4," and could also beat both Google's Chrome and Mozilla's Firefox.

Computerworld ran the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark suite in Windows XP Professional Service Pack 3 (SP3) and on Mac OS X 10.6.3 three times for each browser, then averaged the scores to arrive at the final rankings.

On the Mac, the results rated Safari 5 as 34.8% faster than the previous version of Apple's browser, Safari 4.0.5. Safari 5 beat No. 2 Opera 10.53 by 26.6% and trumped the relatively new Chrome 5's JavaScript speed by 28.9%.

Safari 5 proved more than three times faster than Firefox 3.6.4, the almost-ready Mozilla browser that's been stalled since June 1; Mozilla is trying to quash a final bug or two before shipping that edition.

On Windows, the gap between Safari 5 and its rivals was narrower. There, Safari 5 proved to be 10.6% faster than Chrome 5 and 15.6% faster than Opera 10.53, and rendered JavaScript about 2.5 times faster than Firefox 3.6.4.

Microsoft's historically sluggish Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) took 12 times longer to run the SunSpider benchmarks than Safari 5.

Apple's claim that Safari is "the world's fastest web browser" may be true today, but previous claims haven't stood up to testing. Opera, for example, grabbed the top spot in February, surging past Chrome and Safari, the former No. 1 and No. 2 browsers on Windows, and didn't relinquish it until this month.

The rankings are open to debate. JavaScript performance results can vary significantly, depending on the hardware used to test and the benchmark suite used. Several other technology sites and blogs, for example, have said that their benchmarks show Safari 5 lagging behind Chrome on Windows. Some have gone as far as to call Apple's speed claim "a flat out lie."

Although Safari may own the speed prize -- by Computerworld's testing -- it not the world's most popular browser. According to the newest data from Web metrics company Net Applications, Safari accounted for just 4.8% of all the browsers used in May, a far cry from IE's 59.7%, Firefox's 24.4% or even Chrome's 7.1%. Of the five major browsers on Windows, only Opera, with just 2.4% of the usage market, trails Safari.

Norton Internet Security 2011 public beta attacks new dangers

As protections against garden-variety viruses and malware have become more effective, malware writers have turned to new ways to infect computers in the pursuit of profit. Two increasing threats are malware spread via bad Facebook links and so-called scareware -- malware that masquerades as virus-scanning software.


The main screen of Norton Internet Security 2011.
The beta of Norton Internet Security 2011 adds several tools designed to protect against those threats, along with other useful tools and tweaks. The result is a useful all-around security application aimed at keeping up with a fast-changing landscape where new threats are constantly emerging.

Scanning Facebook links
The new Facebook Scan checks links on your Facebook Wall and News Feed to see whether they link to malware or to sites known to harbor malware. When you start it up, the feature takes you to a browser page, where it reports on the progress and results of the scan.

In order to use the tool (which is actually a Facebook app), you'll have to give Norton Internet Security 2011 access to your Facebook stream. The tool also asks for permission to post the results to your Facebook page. The scanner doesn't require posting permission in order to work, though, so if you feel uncomfortable granting that permission, don't.

The labeling of the tool is somewhat confusing. You access it from the Norton Internet Security 2011 main interface, but on the Web page where the results are reported, it is labeled Norton Safe Web, which is the suite's browser toolbar. But there is no way to scan Facebook directly from the Norton Safe Web toolbar, and the toolbar itself makes no mention of a Facebook scanning tool (at least in this beta version).

I had trouble getting the Facebook Scan to work properly. It stalled at a "Generating results" notice that said it was scanning my feed for viruses. Clicking the "View results" button only started the scan again, and it once again stalled. When I closed the page and started the process again from Norton Internet Security, however, I did get results -- it reported that 27 of the 29 links it checked were safe. Results were pending on the remaining two links.

Each time I used the tool, similar problems occurred. It will clearly be a useful tool, assuming that it's fixed before the program ships.

Battling scareware
One problem with combating scareware is that individual pieces are typically so new that antivirus signatures have yet to be devised to identify them.

The previous version of Norton introduced a "Download Insight" feature that checks files as they are downloaded, as well as files already on your system, to see whether they are "trusted" -- that is, whether other people have downloaded and used them safely. If a piece of software is not trusted, that means it may not be safe. In that way, you are steered away from installing scareware.

The newest version of Norton extends that feature, adding support for more browsers -- while the previous version supported only Internet Explorer and Firefox, the new one includes Chrome, Opera, AOL and Safari. It also supports many instant messaging, peer-to-peer and e-mail applications, including AIM, Outlook, Yahoo Messenger and Windows Live Messenger.

Norton also has introduced a free stand-alone application, Norton Power Eraser, that discovers and kills hard-to-find scareware that cannot be detected by traditional antivirus software. Once you download it, the application scans your system and sends the information to Norton's servers, which analyze and report on the results. Power Eraser will then kill the scareware if you tell it to.


Norton Power Eraser is a free tool that can find and kill hard-to-detect scareware.
Be aware, though, that Norton Power Eraser is a more aggressive system scanner than the normal Norton malware scanner and is likely to return more false positives. So it's a good idea, before taking its advice to kill a program, to do a search on what it finds to get a better sense of whether it's really malware. For example, on my Windows 7 system, Power Eraser reported "shellfolderfix" as being malware, when in fact it is add-on software that helps Windows better remember the size and position of Windows Explorer windows.

Few answers after McAfee antivirus update hits Intel, others

After distributing a buggy antivirus update that apparently disabled hundreds of thousands of computers on Wednesday, McAfee is still at a loss to explain exactly what happened.

McAfee says that just a small fraction of its corporate customers -- less than 0.5 percent -- were affected by the glitch, which caused some Windows XP Service Pack 3 systems to crash and reboot repeatedly. McAfee blamed a bad virus definition update shipped out Wednesday morning, Pacific time, which ended up quarantining a critical Windows process called svchost.exe.

By the end of the day, the antivirus vendor still couldn't say exactly what caused the problem. "We're investigating how it was possible some customers were impacted and some not," said Joris Evers, a McAfee spokesman, speaking via instant message. One common factor amongst the victims of the glitch, however, is that they'd enabled a feature called "Scan Processes on Enable" in McAfee VirusScan software.

Added in version 8.7 of the product, this feature lets McAfee's malware scanner check processes in the computer's memory when it starts up. According to Evers, it is currently not enabled by default. However, some versions of VirusScan did ship with it enabled. McAfee's instructions for repairing affected computers can be found here.

A large number of users reported major problems after installing McAfee's bad update Wednesday.

Systems at Intel were knocked offline before the bad update could be stopped, according to Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy. He couldn't say how many PCs were affected, but said that the problem was "significant."

"There were quite a few clients, laptops and PCs [affected]," he said. "We were able to get it stopped fairly early on, but clearly not soon enough."

About 40 percent of machines in Washington's Snohomish County were affected by the problem, according to John Storbeck, the county's engineering services supervisor. "This is a nightmare," he said in an e-mail message.

In Iowa, a local disaster response exercise was disrupted when 911 computer systems crashed, according to Deb Hale a Security Administrator with Internet Service provider Long Lines in Sioux City, Iowa. County IT staff soon started getting calls from other departments --- including police, fire and emergency response -- and began an emergency shutdown of all computers on the assumption that a virus was spreading.

After finishing the exercise, using a radio system for dispatch, participants learned that there was no virus, just a bad McAfee update, Hale said in a blog post. "Thanks to McAfee we were forced to test our response to a disaster while in the midst of a real 'disaster,'" she wrote.

According to reports Rhode Island Hospital, the National Science Foundation, and many universities were affected. Local police and government agencies in Kentucky experienced problems.

Google researcher gives Microsoft 5 days to fix XP zero-day bug

A Google engineer today published attack code that exploits a zero-day vulnerability in Windows XP, giving hackers a new way to hijack and infect systems with malware.

But other security experts objected to the way the engineer disclosed the bug -- just five days after it was reported to Microsoft -- and said the move is more evidence of the ongoing, and increasingly public, war between the two giants.

Microsoft said it is investigating the vulnerability and would have more information on its next steps later today.

According to Tavis Ormandy, a security engineer who works for Google in Switzerland, hackers can leverage a flaw in Windows' Help and Support Center, which lets users easily access and download Microsoft help files from the Web and can be used by support technicians to launch remote support tools on a local PC.

Ormandy posted details of the vulnerability and proof-of-concept attack code to the Full Disclosure security mailing list early Thursday. "Upon successful exploitation, a remote attacker is able to execute arbitrary commands with the privileges of the current user," Ormandy wrote.

According to Ormandy, his attack scenario works using all major browsers, including Microsoft's newest, IE8. The bug is even easier to exploit when the machine has Windows Media Player, software that's installed by default with all versions of Windows.

Ormandy also said he had come up with a way to suppress a warning prompt that Windows XP displays when the Help and Support Center is called, making the attack stealthier.

His attack is complicated, and requires several tricks, including bypassing a whitelist meant to limit the accessed help documents to legitimate support files; using a cross-site scripting vulnerability; and then executing a malicious script.

But his attack code works. Researchers at French security vendor Vulpen Security confirmed today that Ormandy's proof-of-concept works as advertised on Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) and SP3 machines running Internet Explorer 7 or IE8.

Switching to another browser, such as Mozilla's Firefox or Google's Chrome, is not a solution, Ormandy maintained. "Machines running [a] version of IE less than [IE]8 are, as usual, in even more trouble ... [but] choice of browser, mail client or whatever is not relevant, they are all equally vulnerable," he said.

Ormandy admitted that he reported the vulnerability to Microsoft only five days ago -- on Saturday, June 5 -- but said he decided to go public because of its severity, and because he believed Microsoft would have otherwise dismissed his analysis.

"If I had reported the ... issue without a working exploit, I would have been ignored," he said in the Full Disclosure posting.

He also slammed the concept of "responsible disclosure," a term that Microsoft and other vendors apply to bug reports that are submitted privately, giving developers time to craft a patch before the information is publicly released.

"This is another example of the problems with bug secrecy (or in PR speak, 'responsible disclosure')," Ormandy said. "Those of us who work hard to keep networks safe are forced to work in isolation without the open collaboration with our peers."

Microsoft took Ormandy to task for giving it less than a week to deal with his report. "We are especially concerned about the public disclosure of this issue given we were only notified about it by this researcher on the 5th of June," said Jerry Bryant, a group manager with the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC), in an e-mail this morning.

Others were even blunter.

Microsoft confirms critical Windows XP bug

Microsoft on Thursday confirmed that Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 contain an unpatched bug that could be used to infect PCs by duping users into visiting rigged Web sites or opening attack e-mail.

The company said it has seen no active in-the-wild attacks exploiting the vulnerability.

The bug in Windows' Help and Support Center -- a component that lets users access and download Microsoft help files from the Web -- doesn't properly parse the "hcp" protocol handler, Microsoft said in an advisory issued Thursday afternoon. Attackers can leverage the vulnerability by enticing users to malicious or hacked Web sites, or by convincing them to open malformed e-mail messages.

Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows Server and Windows Server 2008 R2 are not vulnerable to the attack.

Microsoft plans to produce a patch, but has not set a release date. "Microsoft is currently working to develop a security update for Windows to address this vulnerability," the advisory stated. July 13 is Microsoft's next scheduled Patch Tuesday, but it sometimes issues patches outside its monthly plan. The last time it did so was in late March when it fixed a bug in Internet Explorer that attackers were aggressively exploiting.

The advisory was prompted by the bug's disclosure early Thursday , and the release of proof-of-concept attack code. Tavis Ormandy, a security engineer who works for Google in Switzerland, defended the decision to reveal the flaw only five days after reporting it to Microsoft. But Microsoft and other researchers questioned the quick publication.

Microsoft made no distinction between Ormandy and his employer in a blog post Thursday.

"This issue was reported to us on June 5, 2010 by a Google security researcher and then made public less than four days later, on June 9, 2010," said Mike Reavey, the director of the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC). "Public disclosure of the details of this vulnerability and how to exploit it, without giving us time to resolve the issue for our potentially affected customers, makes broad attacks more likely and puts customers at risk."

According to the time stamp on Ormandy's message to the Full Disclosure mailing list, he posted it at 1:46 a.m. Swiss time on June 10, or 4:46 p.m. PT on June 9.

The two companies have traded blows this year that have included public arguments about the quality of each other's software suites -- Google Docs and Microsoft Office -- and about reports that Google wants to phase out Windows inside the company over security concerns.

Some security researchers blasted Ormandy for going public when Google's policy is to not reveal a bug until the affected vendor has a chance to fix the flaw. "Google can't have their cake and eat it too," said Robert Hansen, the CEO of SecTheory, in an interview yesterday.

Ormandy declined to comment when contacted by e-mail. In a message on Twitter late Thursday, however, he said, "The HelpCtr bug today was intended as a personal project. It sucks that work has been dragged into it."

The Help and Support Center vulnerability was the eighth zero-day -- the term used to describe a threat for which there is no patch -- that Microsoft has faced so far this year, according to data provided by Andrew Storms, the director of security operations at nCircle Security.

Six of those vulnerabilities have been patched, with fixes released an average of 43 days after Microsoft acknowledged the bug. The fastest turnaround was seven days for an emergency IE patch Microsoft closed in January. Hackers had exploited the bug to break into Google's corporate network. The longest cycle so far this year was 125 days.

Last year, Microsoft handled 10 zero-days, also patching them in an average of 43 days, with a shortest time-to-fix of eight days and a longest of 151 days.

"Despite the fact that Microsoft has made progress in getting researchers to report vulnerabilities, they're not immune to zero-days," said Storms.

At the current pace, Microsoft will have to deal with 18 zero-days during 2010, nearly double the number in 2009.

Antitrust probe into Apple's iPhone ad ban likely, says expert

Apple will probably face a federal investigation into its decision to bar rival Google from iPhone's mobile advertising market, an antitrust expert said today.

According to reports, the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) are planning to look into whether Apple is unfairly blocking rivals such as Google and Microsoft from the advertising market on the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.

The Financial Times was the first to note interest on the part of federal antitrust regulators.

Earlier this week, Apple modified the language in the terms iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad developers must agree to, effectively banning them from using Google's AdMob advertising network. Google acquired AdMob in late May for $750 million after the FTC approved the deal.

The probe would be the third in the last two months. Investigators are also reportedly targeting Apple over the company's ban of third-party development tools for creating iPhone software and its dominance of the U.S. digital music download business.

But an investigation into the mobile advertising market may give the government its strongest case, said Jeffrey Shinder, managing partner at New York-based law firm Constantine Cannon, and a former special counsel to the FTC.

"I would think [the government] would cast a wider net, but mobile advertising is critical," said Shinder, who has 20 years' experience in antitrust litigation. "Apple's conduct strikes me as brazen there."

According to Nielsen, Apple's iPhone accounts for 28% of the U.S. smartphone market.

Shinder said antitrust regulators would argue that Apple has an even larger share of a more narrowly-defined market -- smartphones with large numbers of available applications for downloading -- and that the mobile advertising market is unique and should be given special consideration.

"Apple has a very strong first-mover advantage in the smartphone market, and the sub-market of what I'd call 'app smartphones,'" said Shinder. "A lot of what Apple's doing, including barring AdMob from the iPhone, is an attempt to entrench that dominant position of the iPhone, and then leverage that into a dominant position in mobile advertising."

Shinder called the AdMob ban "potentially exclusionary," and thus of natural interest to the DOJ and FTC antitrust officials.

Clues that the FTC in particular sees the mobile advertising market as separate from advertising overall can be drawn from the agency's approval of Google's purchase of AdMob. "I think that's the way they're thinking," Shinder said, citing comments the FTC made after the AdMob deal. "Mobile advertising is separate because it's leveraging where and who consumers are. That's something you can't get anywhere else."

The fact that Google likely made that argument during its talks with the FTC -- and that that line of reasoning could be used against Apple, Google's rival in mobile operating system development -- wasn't lost on Shinder.

Apple could counter that it has built its smartphone market position, and by association the mobile advertising business, on the back of popular, high-quality products, said Shinder. Or it could simply delay, figuring that the longer the investigation goes on, the more ad market it could grab.

"One Apple defense would be to say, 'We are leading because our products are terrific, and we have every right to maintain the integrity of our products, or prevent rivals from free-riding,'" Shinder speculated. "Or they could just play for time."

An investigation could take as long as a year, giving Apple the opportunity to build an even stronger position in smartphones and mobile advertising. At that point, it could conceivably give in to the government's demands, allow AdMob onto the iPhone, but because it had had a year to strengthen its own iAd network, be in an unassailable spot.

Apple could also point to the rapid growth of Google's Android mobile platform as a sign that it doesn't dominate the smartphone market. Nielsen pegged Android-powered smartphones with a 9% share of the market, up two percentage points since the end of 2009.

"Time is on Apple's side, and that's huge," said Shinder. "But the government has signaled their interest in watching the company. I don't feel Apple is being unfairly targeted, because I see a pattern here."

Missouri AG Looks Into Google Wi-Fi Mess

Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster is asking Google to answer questions about how the company's widespread wireless-network sniffing activities may have affected local residents.

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The attorney general asked Google to explain how Wi-Fi data collected by the company's StreetView vehicles was used and what it's done to keep the potentially sensitive information safe. He also asked Google to hold on to the data until the appropriate regulators can study the matter.

"We expect Google to provide information to us so we can ascertain whether there is any threat to Missourians' private information, and take action if necessary to protect it," Koster said in a statement.

This latest development shows that state authorities are also taking an interest in a controversy that has reportedly caught the attention of U.S. regulators. Agencies in France, Germany and Canada have already opened investigations, and Google is facing at least seven class-action lawsuits over the matter.

Google StreetView cars, which drive around cities taking photos for use with Google Maps, had been collecting Wi-Fi networking data for years to boost the accuracy of some of its location-based products. But the company recently admitted that they have also inadvertently recorded the contents of e-mails and Web pages on unsecured wireless networks.

Google blamed the debacle on the actions of a single engineer and is now investigating the matter. In the meantime, pressure from regulators worldwide is piling up.

Consumer advocate John Simpson said he was happy to see Missouri asking for an explanation. "Google's ... operation compromised consumers' privacy in the very heartland of America," said Simpson, an advocate with California's Consumer Watchdog, in an e-mail message. "The Internet giant needs to be held accountable."

Google could not immediately be reached for comment.

Google Wi-Fi Data Capture Unethical, But Not Illegal

Google is under global scrutiny for its "accidental" gathering of wi-fi data while driving about photographing the world with its Street View camera cars. In the court of public opinion Google's actions cross ethical boundaries, but whether or not the activities were illegal depends on the laws in place for the given jurisdiction. Businesses in the United States should understand that the interception of publicly available data traversing the airwaves is probably not illegal.

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The lesson for businesses and IT administrators is that you have to put forth some effort to at least give the appearance that you intend for the information to be private in order for there to be any inherent expectation of privacy. The burden should not be on Google, or the general public to have to determine whether the data you let freely fly about unencrypted is meant to be shared or is intended for a specific audience.

Some will equate Google's actions to someone taking property from a business with an unlocked door. The comparison is not apples to apples, though. If a business has an unlocked, or even a wide open door, passersby still know that entering it would be trespassing, and that taking property from inside would be stealing.

However, in Google's case, it is more like the business took its property and set it out in the middle of the street. In fact, it might not even be in front of the business, or even on the same street--since the wi-fi signal from the wireless router is broadcast for a respectable distance in all directions. If someone were walking down the street and found a laptop, or a copy machine in the middle of the street, taking it would be neither trespassing, nor stealing--just serendipitous.

There have been cases where individuals have been fined or prosecuted for accessing open wireless networks. A Michigan man was fined and forced to perform community service for accessing a local café's wireless network without being a customer. An Illinois man plead guilty and received a fine after being caught riding on the wireless network of a non-profit agency from his parked car.

I would argue that even those actions were not technically illegal. If I am out in public with my laptop or iPad, and it detects an available, unencrypted network to connect to, there is no way for me to know whether the owner meant for that network to be private, or if it is intended as a public hotspot. A wireless network is a wireless network, and some devices are configured to connect to any available wireless signal.

Google, however, did not "access" the open networks. It simply intercepted the unencrypted data that businesses and individuals beamed through the air willy-nilly. The data was left in the middle of the street so to speak, and Google gathered it as it drove through collecting photograps.

In Google's case, the legal issues may just be beginning, though. Some countries, like Germany, have a much different opinion of privacy and different laws in place. Even in the United States, there may still be legal avenues for pursuing Google. But, if Google simply collected data that was publicly available, and never even accessed or used the data in any way as they claim, I fail to see where it did anything wrong.

If you want to stay out of the legal gray area, and protect your data you must turn on encryption for your wireless network. WEP encryption is pathetically simple to crack--trivial for anyone interested, but even WEP at least implies that you intended the data to be private. For better protection, you should employ WPA, or better yet WPA-2 encryption.

If you have a business--like a coffee shop or book store--where you want to share a public wireless network, but only with patrons and only under certain conditions, then you should implement some sort of initial notice or login screen that explains the policy for acceptable use of the wi-fi connection.

I am not a lawyer, and I don't play one on TV--or even on the Internet, but the bottom line is that if someone walking or driving by can intercept your unencrypted data as it trespasses into their airspace, it's not your data any more.