The United Kingdom’s Information Commissioner’s Office has ordered Google to redo its company’s privacy policy. The ICO states that Google has made its policy too confusing for users, making it hard to tell exactly how their data is being used.
Specifically, the ICO is concerned with how Google’s policies comply 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.
There have been a number of other similar requests from European countries since Google made the decision to unify the policies of all its services into one mass policy. The move was originally intended to make it simpler for users and Google, however, clearly some groups don’t find that this has been the case.
Google responded to All Things D with this statement regarding the ICO’s decision:
Our privacy policy respects European law and allows us to create simpler, more effective services. We have engaged fully with the authorities involved throughout this process, and we’ll continue to do so going forward.
