EU Orders Google to Revise Privacy Policy or Face Disciplinary Action

Google has been warned to revise its privacy policy by French data regulator CNIL, on behalf of the European Union’s advisory body Article 29 Working Party, which includes data protection authority representatives from all EU data protection authorities. CNIL, Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des Libertés (French: National Commission for Computing and Liberties), was tasked to investigate Google’s privacy policy after serious growing concern that Google’s implemented changes made earlier this year in the company’s data collection practices were in violation of the EU’s Data Protection Directive. Changes made in March of this year by Google include the merger of 60 individual privacy policies into a single policy for all individual Google -owned sites services. Since March, Google has tailored lucrative advertisements based on personal data collected by combining data from sites like YouTube and Gmail and social network Google+. When a user signs in with a Google account, Web browsing history and data can be shared across all Google- owned websites. Under the new agreement, the user cannot opt-out unless they stop using Google services.