US software giant Microsoft could face new fines for possible violations of European data protection laws, the European Union’s head office said on Monday.
The charges against Microsoft related to its free-of-charge .NET Passport service on the Internet, which is used for purchases, playing games and banking transactions, EU representative Jonathan Todd said.
Todd said EU governments and consumer groups expressed concern about the service to the European Commission, which then passed them on to national regulators.
He added that several EU governments had launched a probe into the service, and said each of the EU’s 15 member nations could impose separate fines against Microsoft in this case.
EU officials refused to say exactly what parts of the EU privacy rules Microsoft was violating, nor would they comment on how large any fine could be if the US software giant was found guilty.
Microsoft already faces another, unrelated EU antitrust investigation into its product line, focusing primarily on Microsoft’s Windows program.
The EU said last August that it believed Microsoft was abusing its dominant position in desktop software to horn in on the market for servers, which link personal computers in networks.
The privacy investigation became public after a member of the European Parliament questioned EU Internal Market Commissioner Frits Bolkestein, who said he was looking into the concerns ”as a matter of priority.”
EU privacy rules have been in force since 1995 and oblige companies to ask for consent on using personal information and how it will be used.
The commission’s role in privacy investigations is limited, unlike antitrust probes, and can only advise member governments on how to interpret privacy rules.
”Only the national data protection regulators can go to the company and say, ‘We think you’ve been up to some monkey business,’ ” Todd said. – Sapa-AP