Thursday, May 24, 2007

EU Probes Google Grip on Data

Maija Palmer writes on FT.com:

European data protection officials have raised concerns that Google could be contravening European privacy laws by keeping data on internet searches for too long.

The Article 29 working party, a group of national officials that advises the European Union on privacy policy, sent a letter to Google last week asking the company to justify its policy of keeping information on individuals’ internet searches for up to two years.

The letter questioned whether Google had “fulfilled all the necessary requirements” on data protection.

The data kept by Google includes the search term typed in, the address of the internet server and occasionally more personal information contained on “cookies”, or identifier programs, on an individual’s computer.

This is separate to the personal information Google has begun collecting over the past two years from people who give the group explicit permission to do so.

More here.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home