Google Avoids Fine In UK But Will Change Its Privacy Policies

DW100 (2227906) writes Google has avoided a fine from UK data regulators for its privacy policies that were introduced in 2012. While French and Spanish regulators issued fines of €150,000 and €900,000 respectively, the UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) appears happy to simply ask Google to change the wording of its policies and make them clearer to users so that they can understand more clearly how their data is being gathered and used by the search giant.

Comments

Could have been worse

[l2718]

People are shocked, shocked! to discover that the email service that makes money by showing them targeted ads based on their messages examines the content of the messages for this purpose.

I mean, come on: nobody was forced to sign up for gmail.

Re:Could have been worse

[houghi]

Nobody is shocked. They just need to change their wording so that what they are doing and what they say they are doing is the same and clear to people. That way they can make a correct decision if they want to sign up or not.

Compare it with buying a bottle of some drink. You would also want the volume written on it be the same as the volume of what is in the bottle. Not have it say 5L and no sugar while it is a 1L Mountain Dew bottle.

Laws in Europe can be pretty anal when it comes to being clear to customers. And even then just clicking on OK is not an official contract by any means. It also does not clear you from following the law regarding privacy or any other law.

Also: the fact that other countries come to a different conclusion is because they have different laws that are even based on different legal principals as a basis.(English and Napoleonic Law).
For all I know what is legal in the UK is not in other countries.

Re:Could have been worse

[gsslay]

Except it's not just their messages. It's messages sent to and from others, who didn't sign up for gmail, just corresponded with it.

And you're at least a decade slow if you think that google is "an email service".

Re:This coming from UK, it's pure hypocrisy.

[Richard_at_work]

Oh for crying out loud, can't that myth fucking die?

Even the police suggest its as low as 1.85 million...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-1...

So long as you abide by the Data Protection Act, the British Government have no issues with you operating a CCTV camera. Let me repeat that - so long as you abide by the Data Protection Act...

So, if you follow the rules you are fine. Just as Google would have been if they had followed the rules.

Re:This coming from UK, it's pure hypocrisy.

[91degrees]

There are issues with the ACPO report as well though. Both that what it's counting is misleading, and the methodology only gives us a rough idea.

The actual estimate of public area CCTV in the UK is around 30,000, but this seems to be extrapolated from Cheshire, which is way too small a sample. They also mention a report from the CCTV user group which gives a similar figure but I can't find how that was arrived at. I get the feeling that these are the cameras people are most concerned about.

The rest are "quasi-public space" cameras. Which includes hospitals, and I think it includes schools, shopping malls, car parks, and shops. I may be mistaken but I don't think people care so much about these. We rather expect these places to be monitored.

The problem here is that it isn't clear how the 1.85 million estimate was reached, or, for that matter, the 4.9 million in the most recent survey. Clearly with such wildly differing results we can't shouldn't really accept any of thes figures as anything more than a ballpark figure.

So basically what I'm saying is that I agree we should be suspiscious of those numbers, but we should apply the same scepticism to ACPO's figures.