“The U.S. Federal Trade Commission on Monday finalized a landmark settlement with Google in which the company has agreed to be audited for its privacy practices for the next 20 years,” Sarah Lai Stirland reports for TPM.
“The commission has said that this is the first time that it has required any company to formally implement a comprehensive privacy program to protect individuals’ personal information,” Lai Stirland reports. “The FTC commissioners voted to approve the settlement 4-0, after the period for public comment ended. The proposed settlement was announced in March.”
“The FTC case was prompted by the now-defunct Google Buzz social networking service. Google tried to tack Buzz onto Gmail users’ e-mail accounts, enabling them to provide status updates and to share photos and videos, but it created an uproar when it made users’ Gmail contacts public by default,” Lai Stirland reports. “The commission charged that Google engaged in unfair and deceptive practices in 2010 when it launched Google Buzz by leading users of its Gmail system to believe that they could easily opt-out of the social network. The controls that would enable them to do that were ineffective, the FTC charged at the time.”
Lai Stirland reports, “The FTC’s settlement with Google requires the company to inform and obtain its users’ consent before it shares any of their information with third parties, and subjects the company to 20 years of privacy audits every two years by an independent third party monitoring service. The audits are meant to ensure that Google is living up to its promises about what it is doing with its users’ personal information. The company is also required to implement a comprehensive ‘privacy program.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Now, how about a 20-year moratorium on appropriating other companies’ patented IP?