Europe data regulators have apparently had it with Google. After years of Google stonewalling governments on the so-called wi-spy scandal around Google snooping on individual data in homes using Street View vehicles and then, last year, changing its privacy policies without getting consent from its users, a taskforce of six European government data agencies announced [...]
Slamming Google’s violation of European privacy laws, the Article 29 Data Protection Working Party of European data protection agencies issued its much anticipated report on Google’s integration of user data across the company’s services. Signed by all 27 heads of European data agencies, the letter and the accompanying appendix laid out the ways Google had [...]
In an anticipated move, the Federal Trade Commission levied a $22.5 million fine against Google for violating its ongoing consent decree by violating user privacy by secretly tracking Safari users who had asked not to be tracked: In its complaint, the FTC charged that for several months in 2011 and 2012, Google placed a certain [...]
It’s now being reported that Google has negotiated a deal with the FTC to settle charges of illegally bypassing privacy settings on users using the Safari browser. According to the Guardian: The Wall Street Journal reports that the FTC and Google are close to agreeing a settlement over the privacy breach, in which Google circumvented Apple‘s protections [...]
Euro regulators asked Google to hold off on implementing its new privacy policy. Google ignored the request, so regulators are now drilling down in an investigation of whether the policy violates European privacy laws and regulations. Acting on behalf of the European network of data protection authorities, the French Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des [...]
We seem to be having two debates about Google— on the cultural side, the question is whether the company violates user privacy too much and, on the business side, is Google a monopoly threat in the marketplace? But these are not separate issues at all. Larry Page and Sergey Brin did not create Google because [...]
Last month, Google announced that it would begin integrating user data across all its services and create a single privacy policy that users would automatically agree to for all its services whenever they used any single Google service. European regulators on Feb. 2nd asked Google to hold off implementing the policy until they had a [...]
In a letter sent to Google Chief Executive Larry Page, more than 30 state attorneys general wrote that the new Google policy of consolidating user personal information across all Google services “is troubling for a number of reasons.” In condemning the policy, the state AGs join European privacy regulators in seeing the move by Google [...]
Given the constant variations on Google violating user privacy, this newest breach is so deceptive and in fact targeted some users who had specifically opted out of tracking, so it is indeed a new low in deceptive violations of privacy by the company. According to Information Week: Google has conceded that it used secret programming [...]
From yesterday at the Electronic Privacy Information Center web site. EPIC today filed a Complaint and a Motion for Temporary Restraining Order and Preliminary Injunction in Federal District Court in Washington, DC. EPIC is seeking to compel the Federal Trade Commission to act prior to March 1, when Google plans to make changes in its [...]
