Search engines such as Google, and Social Networking sites including Facebook could find themselves face court action if they do not comply with the planned changes to EU data privacy rules. The European Union are set to propose new data privacy rules in the coming months to replace the current 16 year-old laws on data protection.
Justice commissioner Viviane Reding said there must be an overhaul of the current law to safeguard how personal information is used. Targeted sites will include the likes of Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo amongst others.
Reding wants to give users the right to destroy any data held by the websites, calling it the ‘right to be forgotten’. The users will also have access to more information on the data collected on them, by companies and for what purpose.
With most of the companies based stateside or holding data on servers there it will be down to assigned agencies to watch over privacy issues in EU countries, and to enforce compliance outside Europe.
Micrositez: Search Engine Marketing