Earlier, ICO or Information Commissioner’s Office along with five other European agencies had investigated Google over privacy policies to check if the advertising major was breaking regional laws. Following the investigation, ICO had requested Google to remove any remaining payload data that it had obtained via its Street View cars. Ever since then, the data watchdog was keeping a close eye on Google update policies.
ICO Asks Google to Amend Google Privacy Policies
Finally, we learn the organization (ICO) has asked Google to amend its privacy policies as it believes the revised policies are not in line with UK law/compliant with the Data Protection Act and therefore should be updated, right away.
An ICO spokesperson said:
We have today written to Google to confirm our findings relating to the update of the company’s privacy policy. In our letter we confirm that its updated privacy policy raises serious questions about its compliance with the UK Data Protection Act.
In particular, we believe that the updated policy does not provide sufficient information to enable UK users of Google’s services to understand how their data will be used across all of the company’s products. Google must now amend their privacy policy to make it more informative for individual service users.
Failure to take the necessary action to improve the policies compliance with the Data Protection Act by 20 September will leave the company open to the possibility of formal enforcement action.”
The ICO said that its main issues with Google’s policies change are related to the clarity of the policies in place. The updated policy doesn’t inform users enough about how Google will use their data across their products.Failure to comply with the orders issued could harm Google’s profits in a significant sense.
