Google is likely to face restrictions in Germany with regards to the ways in which it uses user profiles as the watch dog has ordered that Google should obtain users’ consent for the creation of profile from data obtained in course of providing services.
Hamburg’s commissioner for data protection, a state level official told, “Google is ordered to take the necessary technical and organisational measures to guarantee that their users can decide on their own if and to what extend their data is used for profiling.”
Data protection is regulated by state level officials in the country, but the order issued by the Hamburg official has countrywide ramification as it represents Germany in the European task force for evaluating Google’s privacy policy.
Germany’s laws prohibit processing its citizens’ data with regard to financial status, sexual orientation and relationship. Further it is mandatory to obtain users’ explicit permission before it is processed for any purpose.
Google has responded saying that it was studying the order and it may be sometime before it is able to respond. Notably, European data regulators are already expecting the company to follow a set of guidelines with regards to the ways in which data should be stored.
The decision comes in the wake of revelation that it has consolidated it scattered privacy policy into one comprehensive policy. Google is believed to be combining information it has obtained from its services like Gmail, You Tube and Google Maps.
