EU data chiefs ask Google to change privacy policy

European Union regulators want Google to make changes to its new privacy policy to protect the rights of its users, the EU's national data protection regulators said in a letter to the company.

Leading the inquiry on behalf of Europe, France's data protection watchdog had already questioned the legality and fairness of Google's new privacy policy, introduced in March. This consolidated 60 privacy policies into one and pooled data collected on individual users across its services, including YouTube, Gmail and its social network Google+. Users cannot opt out. The regulators' letter said: "Combining personal data on such a large scale creates high risks to the privacy of users." "Therefore, Google should modify its practices when combining data across services for these purposes," the letter said. It was signed by 24 of EU's 27 data regulators plus those of Croatia and Liechtenstein.