UK Information Commissioner Deals Google A Privacy Policy Ultimatum

The UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office  have given Google an ultimatum on its private policy. Google has until September 20th 2013 to make several changes to its privacy policy to make it compliant 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” stated the UK’s ICO in their full report.

To amend this lack of compliance Google must:

“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.”

Google has already previously stated on several occasions that it believes it complies fully with EU regulations and laws. Google has already ignored many requests from EU data agencies in the past and I wonder how different that will be in the case of the UK.

I am certainly hoping that there will be some strong disciplinary actions in place if Google do not respect to data regulations of the UK by refusing to comply with the request.

There are currently eight principles of the UK’s data protection act which are to make sure personal information is:

• Fairly and lawfully processed
• Processed for limited purposes
• Adequate, relevant and not excessive
• Accurate and up to date
• Not kept for longer than is necessary
• Processed in line with your rights
• Secure
• Not transferred to other countries without adequate protection

Image courtesy of The Verge