European regulators call for 'suspension' of 'unlawful' Google privacy policy

London, Feb 29 (ANI): Google's new privacy policy, which comes into effect tomorrow, is illegal and must be suspended, European privacy regulators have said.

The European Commission's data protection advisors expressed "strong doubts" about the lawfulness of Google's new privacy policy, which will allow the company to use information about what users look for and what they do on-line.

The data obtained from all its services, from Gmail, to YouTube, allow it to track interests and target advertising more accurately.

Reporting its preliminary findings, privacy regulator Working Party has now told Google that "their preliminary analysis shows that Google's new policy does not meet the requirements of the European Directive on Data Protection, especially regarding the information provided to data subjects," The Telegraph reports.

Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin of the French Data Protection Authority, which is leading the investigation, said "they regret that Google did not take a real opportunity to consult the authorities prior to the announcement of its new privacy policy on 24 January 2012".

"European data protection authorities are deeply concerned about the combination of personal data cross services," she added in a letter to Google CEO Larry page.

According to the paper, contrary to public statements by Google representatives suggesting that data protection authorities across the EU had been "extensively pre-briefed", not all authorities were informed, and those that were informed only heard about the changes a few days before the announcement.

Falque-PIerrotin said that the new privacy policy provides only generalised information, and that simply telling users what Google would not do with their information was insufficient.

"As a consequence, it is impossible for average users who read the new policy to distinguish which purposes, collected data, recipients or access rights are currently relevant to their use of a particular Google service," she said.

Google, however, said 'it had offered to meet with the French data protection authority on several occasions to answer any questions they might have, and that offer remains open.'

"We believe we've found a reasonable balance between the Working Party's recommendations: to 'streamline and simplify' our policies while providing 'comprehensive information' to users. We are committed to providing our users with a seamless experience across Google's services, and to making our privacy commitments to them easy to understand," the firm said in a statement. (ANI)