Google's making it easier to understand and manage user data it collects

Over the past couple weeks, you've likely gotten emails from a number of website and apps you use regarding updates to their privacy policies. Europe will soon launch its new General Data Protection Regulation (aka the GDPR) to give people more rights over their online data, and Google recently shared all of the steps it's taken to ensure it complies with the new law.

First and foremost, Google's updating the way its privacy policy is presented. Although the policy itself is remaining the same, it's now much easier to understand. You can browse through the policy by certain categories, a "clearer language" is used, and Google's added videos and images to give you a visual of what you're reading.

Additionally, Google is also expanding the controls it gives its users for managing the way their data is collected and handled –

As part of our GDPR compliances efforts, we've improved both the controls and the clarity of information in My Account so that people are better informed about how and why their data is collected.

Being able to download and transfer copies of your data is another big point for the GDPR, and Google's addressing this head on, too. The company's data download tool already allows you to download and save your info from Photos, Drive, Calendar, Play Music, and Gmail, but Google notes it's expanding this to additional services. Similarly, a tool will be added for scheduling downloads and the Data Transfer Project in GitHub makes it easier for app developers to allow users to transfer their account info to another service.

Along with all this, Google also announced that it's bringing its Family Link parental control suite to the EU, is giving publishers more tools for managing ads on their sites, and has –

Now further improved our privacy program, enhancing our product launch review processes, and more comprehensively documenting our processing of data, in line with the accountability requirements of the GDPR.

All of these changes will go into effect on May 25, 2018.

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