Google asked to add home page link to privacy policies

Just to briefly follow up on yesterday's post regarding Google's refusal (to date) to provide a home page link to their privacy policy - as required by California law - here's an article in Computerworld on the subject.

Also of news, we at the Consumer Federation of California have joined this coalition, signing on to a letter urging Google's CEO to reconsider its privacy policy and include that one, little hyperlink!

Jaikumar Vijayan reports:

In the latest indication of the growing unease in some quarters over Google Inc.'s privacy policies, a coalition of advocacy groups is asking the search company to provide a direct link to its privacy policies on its home page.

Executives from the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, the World Privacy Forum, Consumer Action, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California and the Consumer Federation of California today sent a letter to Google CEO Eric Schmidt expressing their concern over the company's failure to post a home page link to its privacy policy. In their letter, the groups called Google's reluctance to post the link on its home page "alarming."

...

Google's refusal to do so also sets it apart from other popular Web sites that routinely put such links on their home pages...

...

The California law that requires company's to post prominent home page links to their privacy policies was specifically designed to give consumers easy, one-click access to the information, said Pam Dixon, executive director of the World Privacy Forum.

As a company that collects and stores a range of information, including health care data, it is important for Google comply with the law, Dixon said. "It is a very straightforward, very simple law in many ways. It is something that most businesses provide for anyhow," she said.

Click here for the rest of the article.