EU plans online ad privacy investigation
Targeted online advertisements are to be investigated by European Union regulators due to recent concerns over privacy invasion.
Search engines have toyed in the past with using previous queries to help guide search results and improving ad targeting.
But recently, social media websites such as Facebook and MySpace have stepped up attempts to tap the profile information of their users and let marketers more accurately target their products to that audience.
Gabriele Loewnau, a legal adviser to the German Federal Commissioner for Data Protection, told Reuters: "This is a very hot topic that can be expected to be part of our work programme next year."
The EU has taken a tough stance on online privacy issues in recent months, with one notable success being its campaign to get Google to cut the time it stores search data to 18 months.
So with companies now using social network data to target their advertising, it comes as no surprise that the issue has been picked up by the EU’s data protection working group.
