EU Regulators Wants Search Engine Giant To Halt Its Privacy Policy Changes

Posted on Feb 3 2012 - 1:07pm by Editorial Staff

According to Reuters, a group of European regulators has asked Google to halt the process of its new privacy policy – suggesting they need to investigate whether the proposals truly protects users’ personal data or not. The Article 29 Working Party, an independent body that brings together data protection authorities from each of the EU’s 27 countries and the EU’s executive European Commission, said it needed to examine Google’s plans more thoroughly before the search group’s policy comes into effect on March 1.

“We wish to check the possible consequences for the protection of the personal data of these citizens in a coordinated way,” it said, explaining that France’s data protection authority would be in charge of the investigation. “In light of the above, we call for a pause in the interests of ensuring that there can be no misunderstanding about Google’s commitments to information rights of their users and EU citizens, until we have completed our analysis.”

Google, earlier stated, within a month’s period, is gearing up to change its current privacy policy – merging its all 60 different product policies into one, resulting into a one single big product. Once you opt-in you can’t stop using all Google products – the change will take effect on March 1. The company is not obliged to wait for the conclusion of the Article 29 Working Group’s investigation before adopting its new policy – the company has tended in the past to be as cooperative as possible with European authorities.

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