EU Asked Google to Revise its Privacy Policy
Early this year Google announced a new privacy policy and consolidated 60 privacy policies for all its services, which the users could not reject. Surely, there were many discussions around these changes. No one could know what those changes meant. Anyway, many of the users accepted the “cost” of those products such as email, YouTube, Google+, Google Docs, Google Play, Android en etc.
Time passed and 24 of the EU’s 27 data regulators and administrators in Croatia and Liechtenstein wrote Google and suggested to reevaluate its policy of all this combined personal data. They did not call the data collection by Google illegal, but it follows an investigation that started France’s Commission Nationale de l’Informatique. By the way, France’s Commission Nationale de l’Informatique started before Google introduced its new privacy.
“Combining personal data on such a large scale creates high risks to the privacy of users…Therefore, Google should modify its practices when combining data across services for these purposes.”
In the letter there are 12 recommendations mentioning how Google might refine its policy. The first five is about the internet search, Ad Company, browsing records, location data and credit cards. While the rest is asking Google make it easier for users to understand the company’s intentions and allow people to opt out from bundling data.
All this have been made for providing hyper-accurate demographic data for businesses for selling your stuff. As you know Google Ads are the main source of revenue for the company this is the reason many think Google may test the EU’s resolve on the matter.
“Google is being very aggressive and are playing for high stakes because these (privacy policy) changes are very valuable to their advertising business. They may be prepared to test the legal position in Europe to see what they can get away with.” -Chris Watson, CMS Cameron McKenna LLP
Currently, Google is discussing with the EU these questions.