The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) in the UK has ordered Google to rewrite its privacy policy by September 20 this year or face enforcement action.
The ICO is working with the 27 other data protection authorities across Europe including those in France and Spain, who have already warned Google over its privacy policy.
Google is reported to have changed privacy policy and terms of use of most of its services in March 2012. The ICO has written to Google to confirm its findings relating to the update of the company’s privacy policy.
An ICO spokesperson said: "In our letter we confirm that its updated privacy policy raises serious questions about its compliance with the UK Data Protection Act.
"In particular, we believe that the updated policy does not provide sufficient information to enable UK users of Google’s services to understand how their data will be used across all of the company’s products."
The spokesperson noted that Google must now amend their privacy policy to make it more informative for individual service users.
Google said the company’s privacy policy respects European law and allows it to create simpler, more effective services.
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"We have engaged fully with the authorities involved throughout this process, and we’ll continue to do so going forward," the company said.
Last year, the ICO fined about £300,000 to four different councils for a variety of data breaches and said it will take action against those companies which fail to comply with new regulations on collecting data from online customers.
