Mountain View, Calif. – Attorneys General from 36 U.S. states and territories, including California, on Wednesday expressed their concerns about recently announced changes to the privacy policy of Mountain View-based Google, sending a letter to CEO Larry Page.
The AGs have requested a meeting with Page, and have given the company a week to respond.
The changes, scheduled to automatically take effect on March 1, essentially would allow Google to take the personal information it collects when consumers use one of its services, and share it with all of the company’s other services.
“Our offices litigate cases of identity fraud with regularity, and it seems plain to us that Google’s privacy policy changes, which suggest your company’s intent to create richer personal data profiles, pose the risk of much more damaging cases of identity theft and fraud when that data is compromised,” said the letter, authored by Maryland Attorney General Doug Gansler. “With this newly consolidated bank of personal data, we foresee potentially more severe problems arising from any data breach.”
This article was also published in Bay Area Tech Wire.
Related link:
Press release – http://tinyurl.com/7vc8a4k
Photo by Flickr user hyku/Josh Hallett, used under Creative Commons license
