Group Letter Urging Google to Give Privacy Its Rightful Place on the Homepage
Page Media
A coalition of privacy and consumer organizations from California to Washington, D.C. have sent a letter today urging Google to post a prominent link on its homepage to its privacy policy in accordance with the California Online Privacy Protection Act (OPPA) and the widespread practice of commercial web sites.
The organizations include EPIC, the California-based Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, the World Privacy Forum, Consumer Action, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Consumer Federation of California, and the ACLU of Northern California.
The ACLU supported OPPA as it moved through the California legislature. The law went into effect on July 1, 2004. It requires that all California companies operating a commercial Web site must post a conspicuous privacy policy on their website and disclose the kinds of personally identifiable data that they collect and share with third parties. Companies must also clearly mark their privacy statements, abide by their policies, inform consumers of processes to opt out of data sharing, and publish a date the policy goes into effect.
Google has come under criticism recently for failing to post a prominent homepage link to its privacy policy and instead putting the privacy policy on an internal page, saying that it did not want to clutter its homepage.
But several experts, including the head of the California Office of Privacy Protection, have said that Google should include the link.
Marc Rotenberg, Executive Director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, D.C., said, "This is not rocket science. And the word 'privacy' is not going to take up a lot of space on the Google homepage."
Pam Dixon, Executive Director of the World Privacy Forum in San Diego, California said, "Consumers should be able to access Google's privacy policy with just one click from its homepage — this is an industry-wide best practice that Google is not exempt from."
Beth Givens, Director of the San Diego-based Privacy Rights Clearinghouse said, "Google's homepage will easily accommodate this important seven-letter word."
