data-protection

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By Julia Fioretti BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The United States has set out limits to its use of data collected in bulk about European citizens after a new information-sharing pact was agreed this month, according to documents seen by Reuters. A clear explanation of what information could be used for — preventing its “indiscriminate” and “arbitrary” use — was a key condition of the new Privacy Shield framework that enables firms to easily transfer personal data to the United States. Under the deal, Washington agreed to create a specific new role within the State Department to deal with complaints and enquiries forwarded by EU data protection agencies.

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By Julia Fioretti BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Facebook said on Monday it would appeal a court ruling ordering it to stop tracking the online activities of non-Facebook users in Belgium who visit Facebook pages, or face a 250,000 euro ($269,000) daily fine. Belgium's data protection regulator took the U.S. company to court in June, accusing it of trampling on EU privacy law by tracking people without a Facebook account without their consent. At stake is the so-called 'datr' cookie, which Facebook places on people's browsers when they visit a Facebook.com site or click a Facebook 'Like' button on other websites, allowing it to track the online activities of that browser.

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By Julia Fioretti BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Google Inc is refusing to bow to an order from the French privacy watchdog to scrub search results worldwide when users invoke their “right to be forgotten” online, it said on Thursday, exposing itself to possible fines. The French data protection authority, the CNIL, in June ordered the search engine group to de-list on request search results appearing under a person's name from all its websites, including Google.com. Google complied with the ruling and has since received more than a quarter of a million removal requests, according to its transparency report.

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Search engine Google has agreed to better inform users about how it handles their personal information after an investigation by Britain's data protection regulator found its privacy policy was too vague. The Information Commissioner's Office said in a statement that it required Google to sign a “formal undertaking” that it would make the changes by June 30 and take further steps in the next two years. The ICO investigation stems from a privacy policy implemented by Google in March 2012 that consolidated some 70 existing privacy policies into one and pooled data collected on individual users across its services, including YouTube, Gmail and its social network Google+.