Google fires engineer for breaking privacy policy

A Google site reliability engineer has been fired for breaching the search giant's internal privacy policies.

David Barksdale was given his marching orders after it was reported he acquired private details from Gmail, Google Voice and IM messages of four teenagers.

It was also suggested Barksdale only accessed the accounts to show off to friends and colleagues.

Google declined to comment on whether the allegations were true, although was able to confirm Barksdale had been asked to leave.

"We dismissed David Barksdale for breaking Google's strict internal privacy policies," said Bill Coughran, Google's senior vice president of engineering.

"We carefully control the number of employees who have access to our systems and we regularly upgrade our security controls."

He said Google is significantly increasing the amount of time it spends on auditing logs to ensure controls are effective.

"That said, a limited number of people will always need to access these systems if we are to operate them properly, which is why we take any breach so seriously," Coughran added.

Despite the increased efforts Google has promised, the breach has already occurred and customers' privacy has been compromised, said Ed Macnair, chief executive at Overtis.

"Controlling and recording precisely who has accessed data, and regularly reviewing activity logs to spot any adverse behaviour, is the only way to mitigate this risk and prevent systems administrators from abusing the trust of their employers and customers."

Google has had some serious privacy issues to deal with this year, most notably surrounding the data it [a href="https://www.itpro.com/624184/privacy-group-accuses-google-of-breaking-law" target="_blank"]collected from unprotected Wi-Fi networks[a] as part of its Street View project.

Despite concerns being raised across the world over the scandal, in the UK the Information Commissioner's Office said the data gathered by Google in the country was not significant enough to warrant any punishment.