Google Agrees With ICO Further Changes To Its Privacy Policy

The Information Commissioner's Office has required Google to sign a formal undertaking to improve the information it provides to people about how it collects personal data in the UK. The ICO found that the search engine was too vague when describing how it uses personal data gathered from its web services and products combined.

Google introduced a new privacy policy in March 2012 combining around 70 existing policies for various services, but the group of the national data protection officers in the EU ruled that the new policy did not include sufficient information for service users as to how and why their personal data was being collected.

For the UK Google has now signed an undertaking committing with the ICO to make further changes to the privacy policy to ensure it meets the requirements of the Data Protection Act and to take steps to ensure that future changes to its privacy policy comply, including user testing.