Mustard As Contraceptive

becomes personal?

During the day yesterday there was a debate at the European Committee for Civil Liberties on the possibility of consider IP addresses as personal data , and especially including them in the category of common data , or as elements in a position to uniquely identify an individual.

A regulatory framework that provides some kind of legal protection to IP addresses may raise some problems for reality as Google, along with huge amounts of data that is constantly faced with handle, also contains the IP addresses of machines with which it comes into contact. The collection and storage of IP addresses allows Google to be able, for example, contain the phenomenon of click fraud in the advertising field, or to identify the geographical origin of visitors.

The issue is fairly complex. In formal terms, an IP address can not be traced in a certain and conclusively to an individual, but only to a system: you can determine which computer it is attached, but not as a person were sitting in front of that computer.

The comparison on IP addresses, however, has quickly moved on story of the merger of Google and DobuleClick , currently being examined by the European Commission's own. The legal director of Google, Peter Fleischer, in this regard said: "It depends on trust. If users do not trust us, they will not use our services. And users do not have confidence unless we are committed to protecting their privacy ".

Carlos Coelho, a member of the EPP-ED parliamentary group, has argued, however, that "the trust between a user and a provider of online services can not exist in a monopoly situation, and that the acquisition of Doubleclick by Google will created a situation monopoly. "If this view is shared by others, it is reasonable to believe the establishment of highly restrictive laws regarding privacy and data protection.

This possibility is backed by one of the most influential figures in scope of data protection, the German commissioner Peter Scharr, who argues that IP addresses should be considered in situations where personal information may be used to identify someone. This stance might grim fertile ground in Europe: if this were It will be difficult to prevent the collection of IP addresses, but rather the creation of a database with special security measures and strict restrictions on access .