A recent policy change made by search giant Google in June has now resulted it in being branded as a ‘serial privacy violator’. Consumer Watchdog and the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse according to The Washington Post have now filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) stating that Google had made changes in its policy in the said month in order to gain more data from its users.
The same consumer advocacy groups branded the move as “highly deceptive” and state that Google did not make it clear as to what had changed, which may have lead to plenty of its users blindly accepting those policy changes. Google has said that the changes were made after global testing hinting that a few users did know about the change.
Back in 2011 Google was involved in a similar privacy related incident that resulted in a consent decree with the FTC. Google was fined $22.5 million in 2012 after allegations that the search giant was discovered tracking users using Apple’s Safari browser.
No consumer out there would like it if their private data is being used to generate money, and this is more to do with them knowing about it than anything else. However, the issue at hand arises from the fact that Google did little to let its users know that things had changed.
