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Article: IP Addresses Are Personal Data, E.U. Regulator Says
- Article from:
- The Washington Post
- Article date:
- January 22, 2008
- Author:
CopyrightThis material is published under license from the Washington Post. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Washington Post. (Hide copyright information)
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IP addresses, strings of numbers that identify computers on the
Internet, should generally be regarded as personal information, the
head of the European Union's group of data privacy regulators said
Monday.
Germany's data-protection commissioner, Peter Scharr, leads the
E.U. group, which is preparing a report on how well the privacy
policies of Internet search engines operated by Google, Yahoo,
Microsoft and others comply with E.U. privacy law.
Scharr told a European Parliament hearing on online data
protection that when someone is identified by an IP, or Internet
protocol, address, "then it has to be regarded as personal data."
His view differs from that of Google, which insists an IP ...