Google Hit Over Privacy Policy

Once again Google is receiving a battering. This time it’s about having a direct link to its privacy policy from its homepage. A coalition of advocacy groups, including the Electronic Privacy Information Centre, the World Privacy Forum, Consumer Action, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the ACLU of Northern California have written to Google asking it to provide a link to its privacy policy from its homepage, which they consider a major issue, according to the BBC.

Back in 2003 the New York Times question whether Google complied with the California Online Privacy Protection Act of 2003 and the issue has been growing since then.

In a conference call with journalists, Beth Givens of Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, told the BBC:

"I went through the exercise of finding [Google's] privacy policy and it’s not easy. It’s not intuitive and it’s not a couple of clicks. You have to work at it. The Google privacy policy prints out to five pages. It’s something I think they would be proud to point to. It’s a hefty privacy policy."

Google agrees that a privacy policy should be easy to access, and claims that its policy is simple to find. In a statement it claimed:

"In addition to offering a Privacy Centre with our privacy policy and other important information, we also created a YouTube privacy channel with videos explaining our practices and products."