Google must 'come cleaner' with its customers , says Europe
Google must make it clearer to its customers what personal data is being collected from them and how it is being used, European regulators have told the search giant.
Google gets a warning from EU
In a letter to Google, the regulators said Google did not appear to adhere to Europe’s approach to data collection, which requires explicit prior consent by individuals and that the data collected be kept at a minimum.
The Europeans stopped short of describing the company’s 10-month-old data collection policy as illegal, said the New York Times.
Instead their requests were “practical recommendations.” But if Google did not make changes, Jacob Kohnstamm, head of the Dutch data protection authority, said national regulators probably would take legal action to compel changes.
“After all, enforcement is the name of the game,” Kohnstamm said.
The request was made by the French regulator, CNIL, the National Commission for Computing and Civil Liberties, at a news conference in Paris.
Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin, chairwoman of CNIL, said her agency was giving Google “three to four months” to respond to its concerns.
"If Google does not implement these recommendations, we will pass to a different phase, a phase of sanctions,” Ms. Falque-Pierrotin said.
In France, CNIL can fine companies as much as €300,000 for privacy breaches.
Google said in a statement that it believed that what it calls its privacy policy was legal.
“We have received the report and are reviewing it now,” Peter Fleischer, the Google global privacy counsel, said in the statement.
“Our new privacy policy demonstrates our longstanding commitment to protecting our users’ information and creating great products. We are confident that our privacy notices respect European law.”
Some of Google’s main businesses, depend on consumer profiling for the targeting of advertising, the NYT pointed out.
Jeff Gould, president of SafeGov, a group representing companies that sell software and hardware to governments, said Google’s privacy policy was in his view "a completely legitimate model if you give the consumer the opportunity to opt out.”
European antitrust regulators are separatelyinvestigating whether Google has used its search engine to favour its own services and through "preferential rankings" put competitors at a disadvantage.
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is also preparing a recommendation that will ask the U.S. government to sue Google for its search engine practices.