Google has been told by the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) that it has until September 20th to change its privacy policy. The ICO believes that the current policy does not comply with UK data protection law.
Much of the issue stems from the fact that the ICO questions whether users of Google services are aware of how their data could be shared across other services that the search engine giant offers. For example information gathered from searches that a user has made using Google’s homepage could be used to then target the adverts that the user sees on You Tube, another Google company.
The trouble seems to have stemmed from a move that Google made back in March of this year when it streamlined its privacy policy by combining the privacy policies of over sixty services that Google offers into one document. It is this new document that the ICO has an issue with. The upshot is that if you sign up to one Google service you are effectively sharing your data with all the other services that Google offers. If you decline to accept the privacy policy in relation to one service then you cannot use any of the other services, leading to accusations that it will lead to an overall loss of privacy. Google counters this argument with one of its own, namely that by unifying all of these policies it will lead to Google developing better products that provide a better user experience and use more targeted adverts.
The ICO has wide ranging powers to deal with those it believes are contravening the nation’s privacy laws. At one end of the spectrum it can issue an “undertaking” which is an instruction to improve a company’s compliance with the Data Protection Act. At the other end of the spectrum it can issue fines of up to £500000 in the case of a serious data protection breach. It is unlikely at this stage that Google will face a large fine for this. It would appear that what the ICO wants is for users to be able to opt out of parts of the privacy agreement relating to sharing data without it impacting on their ability to use other services.
Google has also been recently told by the ICO that it must destroy all the WiFi data that it collected while its Street View vehicles travelled around the country.