Google has announced that it has fired a software engineer at its Seattle office for allegedly violating its internal privacy policies. In a blog post announcing the decision, Google's senior vice president of engineering, Bill Coughran, said that engineer David Barksdale accessed the private information of several underage users.

Coughran noted that Google is taking several steps to ensure that a similar breach does not take place again, including conducting more frequent audits of its logs to ensure that its security controls are effective. Coughran also said that Google already carefully controls the number of employees who have access to its systems.

News of the security breach comes in the wake of several other controversies over Google's privacy practices. For example, Google is being investigated by authorities in the U.S. and overseas for accidentally collecting personal data on unsecured Wi-Fi networks as its vehicles drove around city streets taking pictures for Google Maps. In addition, Google was recently sued by several users of its social networking service Buzz for exposing their contact lists to others without their permission. That lawsuit has since been settled, and Google has taken steps to change the way contacts are displayed on Buzz.