Reding will propose an overhaul of the EU's 16-year-old laws on data protection in the coming months to enforce more safeguards on how personal information is used.
Much of the revamp would target sites such as Facebook, Google, Microsoft or Yahoo, because of rising worries about how they use information they collect about users' personal habits.
Reding wants to force companies to allow Internet users to withdraw any data held by the websites, calling it the "right to be forgotten," as well as make the firms provide more information on what data is collected and for what purpose.
With many of the companies based in the United States or holding data on servers there, she said agencies watching over privacy issues in EU countries should be given more powers to enforce compliance outside Europe.
More: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/16/us-eu-data-privacy-idUSTRE72F69S20110316
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Much of the revamp would target sites such as Facebook, Google, Microsoft or Yahoo, because of rising worries about how they use information they collect about users' personal habits.
Reding wants to force companies to allow Internet users to withdraw any data held by the websites, calling it the "right to be forgotten," as well as make the firms provide more information on what data is collected and for what purpose.
With many of the companies based in the United States or holding data on servers there, she said agencies watching over privacy issues in EU countries should be given more powers to enforce compliance outside Europe.
More: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/16/us-eu-data-privacy-idUSTRE72F69S20110316
