Consumer Watchdogs Flog Google's Privacy Policy
Privacy and consumer advocates urged Internet giant Google on Tuesday to post a prominent link on its homepage to its privacy policy. Their letter to CEO Eric Schmidt urges the Mountain View, Calif., company to comply with state law and "the widespread practice for commercial Web sites as soon as possible."
The effort is being spearheaded by the Electronic Privacy Information Center; Privacy Rights Clearinghouse; World Privacy Forum; Consumer Action, the Electronic Frontier Foundation; the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California; and the Consumer Federation of California. The groups hosted an afternoon conference call with reporters to further articulate their message.
Google has been criticized recently for failing to post the privacy policy link because officials said they did not want to clutter the search engine's homepage. Several experts, including the head of the California Office of Privacy Protection, have said that Google should include the link.
"Consumers should be able to access Google's privacy policy with just one click from its homepage -- this is an industry-wide best practice that Google is not exempt from," WPF Executive Director Pam Dixon said. EPIC's Marc Rotenberg added: "This is not rocket science -- and the word 'privacy' is not going to take up a lot of space."
A Google spokeswoman said her company shares the view that privacy information should be easy to find "and we believe our privacy policy is readily accessible to our users." Privacy information should also be easy to understand, she said. That's why in addition to offering a Privacy Center, Google created a YouTube privacy channel with videos explaining its practices and products.
Categories:
Privacy
Join the Discussion
The National Journal Group has the right (but not the obligation) to monitor the comments and to remove any materials it deems inappropriate.
Comments powered by Disqus