James Delahunty
17 Aug 2011 8:48
UK Information Commissioner gives suggestions to search giant.
An ICO report into Google's privacy policies and practices was broadly positive, though it did warn that problems could still arise. The commissioner looked into Google after the Street View incident last year, in which Google's Street View cars accidentally sniffed payload data packets from unsecured wireless networks.
The incidents happened across the world and different jurisdictions dealt with the incident in different ways. Since then, Google promised reforms to help ensure better privacy practices later.
It has been praised for improving staff training and for a Privacy Design Document (PDD) which laid out guidelines and safeguards for engineers working on new Google products.
The ICO also welcomes Privacy Stories, a series of tutorials produced by Google for users, outlining what data the company keeps and why. It covers 28 products, but the ICO has called for it to be extended to all products offered by Google.
"We know that there is no perfect solution, so we will continue to improve our current processes and develop new ones so that privacy awareness grows and evolves alongside Google," Alma Whitten, director of Privacy at Google, wrote in response to the report.