Due to a reporting error the spelling and title of Skyhook Wireless Senior Vice President Mike Shean were incorrect in the story, "After Google incident, Wi-Fi data collection goes on." The story has been corrected in the wire and paragraphs 19, 20, and 21 have been corrected as follows:
Skyhook Wireless operates more than 400 vehicles that drive around the U.S. logging wireless data, much like Google's Street View cars used to. Unlike Street View, however, Skyhook has never logged anything more than MAC addresses, location strength, and GPS and cell tower data, according to Skyhook founder senior vice president Mike Shean. Skyhook still uses the cars, in addition to logging data from devices, because the company believes that it gets higher-quality data using this technique.
Shean points out that for wireless networks to work, they must broadcast the type of data that his company collects. "We're not doing anything to violate your privacy," he said. "All we're doing is collecting waves that are in the open spectrum."
Skyhook gets maybe five requests per year from people who want their wireless router removed from the database, Shean said. They honor these requests.