Google faces enquiry over undeleted data

Google faces fresh privacy controversy after admitting it did not delete private data they claimed was erased in 2010.

The internet search engine was order in December 2010 to delete all private information from its Street View after confessing to mistakenly collected users private passwords and details.

Google confirmed to Britain’s Information Commissioner’s Office they would wipe out the data but has since revealed that human error prevented them doing so.

According the reports in the British press, over ten countries in Europe are affected by the blunder, including Australia.

“Google has recently confirmed that it still has in its possession a portion of payload data collected by our Street View vehicles,” Google said.

“Google apologises for this error. Google would now like to delete the remaining data.”

The company now face an enquiry which could result in a fine reaching £500,000 if they are found guilty of a privacy breach.

The controversy follows a bad few days for Google with their popular chat service, Google Talk, suffering a global outage as the London 2012 Olympics get underway.

"We're aware of a problem with Google Talk affecting a majority of users,” said Google in a statement.

“The affected users are able to access Google Talk, but are seeing error messages and/ or other unexpected behaviour.

“We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and continued support.

“Please rest assured that system reliability is a top priority at Google, and we are making continuous improvements to make our systems better.”

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