“Alphabet unit Google has been targeted by a French consumer group and its peers in complaints to privacy watchdogs over its vast trove of users’ personal data harvested via their Google accounts,” European consumer organization BEUC announced on Thursday.
In addition to the French consumer group, others in the Czech Republic, Greece, Norway, and Slovenia have given their gripes on their data protection authorities, according to BEUC.
It announced that the German consumer body had delivered a warning letter to Google that could lead to a civil lawsuit. In contrast, consumer agencies in the Netherlands, Denmark, and Sweden had sent letters to their privacy regulators warning them about Google’s practices.
BEUC announced that the issue was Google’s account sign-up process.
“The language Google uses at every step of the registration process is unclear, incomplete, and misleading,” the group announced
“Google also frames the more privacy-friendly options as missing out on advantages. This prevents the consumer from taking an informed decision when they make their choices and results in unfair, non-transparent and unlawful processing of their personal data,” it announced.
Some agencies protested about Google’s tracking of consumers to their privacy enforcers four years ago; however, they have yet to see any action being put up with. They seek to ramp up the pressure on regulators with the recent complaints.
