karl
April 2nd, 2013, 11:54 AM
Google is being formally investigated over an alleged breach of data protection laws after it radically overhauled its privacy policy to allow it to create more detailed profiles of individuals.
The Information Commissioner’s Office, Britain’s privacy regulator, said it would launch a formal investigation after Google did not bow to European pressure to reverse the changes.
Google introduced its privacy policy in March last year. It was designed to grant the web giant authority to combine information from more than sixty different services, such as web search, Gmail, Android smartphones and YouTube, into a single master profile for each consumer.
By tracking behaviour and across more of the web, it aims to build a more detailed profiles of individuals' interests to enable it to target advertising more accurately.
Previously, data from separate Google services was held and used separately. Google went ahead with the overhaul despite protests led by the French privacy watchdog, CNIL, on behalf of regulators across Europe, including in Britain.
Today the Information Commissioner’s Office said a formal investigation would go ahead.
See full story here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/9966704/Google-faces-privacy-investigation-over-merging-search-Gmail-and-YouTube-data.html
The Information Commissioner’s Office, Britain’s privacy regulator, said it would launch a formal investigation after Google did not bow to European pressure to reverse the changes.
Google introduced its privacy policy in March last year. It was designed to grant the web giant authority to combine information from more than sixty different services, such as web search, Gmail, Android smartphones and YouTube, into a single master profile for each consumer.
By tracking behaviour and across more of the web, it aims to build a more detailed profiles of individuals' interests to enable it to target advertising more accurately.
Previously, data from separate Google services was held and used separately. Google went ahead with the overhaul despite protests led by the French privacy watchdog, CNIL, on behalf of regulators across Europe, including in Britain.
Today the Information Commissioner’s Office said a formal investigation would go ahead.
See full story here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/9966704/Google-faces-privacy-investigation-over-merging-search-Gmail-and-YouTube-data.html