Google policy 'violates EU rules'

Google’s new privacy policy appears to violate the European Union’s data protection rules, according to France’s data protection authority.

Google announced its new privacy policy with much fanfare last month.

It regulates how the web giant uses the enormous amounts of personal data it collects through its search engine, email and other services.

The EU’s data protection authorities are concerned about the privacy effects of the policy and asked French regulator CNIL to investigate them.

CNIL said its “preliminary analysis shows that Google’s new policy does not meet the requirements of the European Directive on Data Protection”.

The agency said in a letter posted on its website today that Google’s explanation of how it will use the data was too vague and difficult to understand “even for trained privacy professionals”.