Google's Seoul offices raided by South Korean police

The South Korean police raided Google's Seoul offices on Tuesday on suspicion that the company's Street View fleet of cars had illegally collected data from South Korean citizens.

"[We] have been investigating Google Korea on suspicion of unauthorised collection and storage of data on unspecified internet users from Wi-Fi networks," said the Korean National Police Agency in a statement.

Google has come under fire from authorities in a number of countries after its Street View cars were found to have registered Wi-Fi data from people's routers as the cars surveyed locations for Google Maps. The South Korean probe follows similar investigations by data protection officials in countries such as the UK, France, Canada and Germany.

"We can confirm that the police have visited Google Korea in conjunction with their investigation around data collection by Street View cars. We will cooperate with the investigation and answer any questions they have," said Google in a statement.

In July, Google announced that it had cleared its Street View programme with the necessary regulators to send its cars out again in Ireland, Norway, South Africa and Sweden. Its Street View programme was temporarily halted when the worries over Wi-Fi data harvesting were first raised by the data protection authority in Hamburg, Germany in May.