By CBC News

Google Street View cars breached Canadian privacy laws by inappropriately collecting personal information through a "careless error," the federal privacy commissioner has found.

"Our investigation shows that Google did capture personal information -- and, in some cases, highly sensitive personal information such as complete e-mails. This incident was a serious violation of Canadians' privacy rights," Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart stated Tuesday.

Information collected by Google's cars included complete email addresses, user names and passwords, names and residential telephone numbers and addresses, and health details, Stoddart said.

Google admitted it had gathered the information in a number of countries in a blog posting in April and said it had done so unintentionally. The company's cars inadvertently scanned and gathered information from unencrypted Wi-Fi networks that they drove by, Google said.

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Do you password protect or encrypt your Wi-Fi network? What steps do you take to protect your personal information online?