EU and French data protection agencies will order Google to ‘unravel’ its privacy policy

15 Oct, 2012



Google is already under EU scrutiny for breaches of antitrust regulation. Now the search giant’s privacy settings are also drawing negative attention.

According to The Guardian, CNIL (France’s data protection agency), and other EU data protection commissioners will announce that Google breaches EU privacy regulations, by not offering users a chance to opt out of the “consolidation” of all their data.

Google introduced privacy policy changes in March 2012, announcing that it would start to assemble all user data in one place. Henceforth, all user data from Gmail, YouTube, G+ and other Google services would be kept in one profile.

While Google said this was for reasons of ‘simplification’, it’s clear that the practice also allows Google to draw up a much more detailed profile of its users. A more complete profile of users would of course allow Google to target its ads even more precisely.

via EU data protection chiefs to order Google to ‘unravel’ privacy policy | ITProPortal.com.

Photo: Google plans for World Domination, jurvetson Flickr stream

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Raf Weverbergh

Editor of whiteboard. Raf Weverbergh was a magazine journalist at Humo whose work appeared in magazines like Rolling Stone, Playboy, Mail on Sunday, Publico and South China Morning post before starting Whiteboard in 2012. He profiles entrepreneurs and businesses and loves to chat on Twitter, Linkedin or Skype (rafweverbergh).

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