Watchdog Group Slams Google on Privacy

[Nomad559]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070609/ap_on_hi_te/google_privacy

Google Inc.'s privacy practices are the worst among the Internet's top destinations, according to a watchdog group seeking to intensify the recent focus on how the online search leader handles personal information about its users.

In a report released Saturday, London-based Privacy International assigned Google its lowest possible grade. The category is reserved for companies with "comprehensive consumer surveillance and entrenched hostility to privacy."

None of the 22 other surveyed companies — a group that included Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news), Microsoft Corp. and AOL — sunk to that level, according to Privacy International.

While a number of other Internet companies have troubling policies, none comes as close to Google to "achieving status as an endemic threat to privacy," Privacy International said in an explanation of its findings.

[emilyg]

1. Thank you.

R