FTC To Audit Google Regularly Following Buzz Investigation

After ruling that Google Buzz violated it’s own privacy policy the FTC today announced long reaching privacy audits for the company that span more than two decades.

According to the Official Google Blog the company will now “ask users to give us affirmative consent” before they make any changes towards how information is shared. Google went on to “apologize again for the mistakes we made with Buzz.”

FTC chairman Jon Leibowitz says the settlement was a “tough” one, while adding, “when companies make privacy pledges, they need to honor them.”

Google put in the final word, apologizing to users:

We’d like to apologize again for the mistakes we made with Buzz. While today’s announcement thankfully put this incident behind us, we are 100 percent focused on ensuring that our new privacy procedures effectively protect the interests of all our users going forward.

More details about how Google will ensure user privacy and compliance have yet to be disclosed.