Google nears $6.9m US settlement over wifi incident

Google is nearing a US$7 million (A$6.9 million) settlement with some 30 US states over a 2010 incident in which its Street View mapping cars collected passwords and other personal data from home wireless networks, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The announcement of the settlement is expected to be made by the states early this week, according to the person, though some of the final details of the deal were still being hammered out last Friday.

Google has said the incident was a mistake. A group of states, led by then-Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, began the investigation into Google in 2010 after the company revealed that its fleet of Street View cars had inadvertently collected the data from unsecured wireless networks.