Channel 4 News has learnt that Google could be forced to carry a cigarette-box style warning about privacy on its websites. The Internet search giant has amassed a massive database of personal information about its users, including what sites we visit and our online shopping habits, and even what restaurants we locate via Internet maps. An expert panel set up to advise the European Commission believes that Google should seek explicit informed consents before retaining such detailed information. Here’s our technology correspondent Benjamin Cohen.

You can make money without doing evil. It’s Google’s famous mission statement. But the world’s biggest search engine is the focus of mounting paranoia over the growing scope of its power over every one of us.

This is the lauding Googleplexes, to here that tens of millions of us turn everyday to have our questions answered, find directions, communicate with friends, and be instinct online. In fact, Google increasingly controls almost every aspect of our digital lives.

I think there is a different stream of perception and a lot of the reality. And if people felt the same way that, you know, that had been written, I think they would stop using Google, they wouldn’t trust us. But reality is people do trust us and will, and continue to use the service.

Indeed, three quarters of us use Google services, more than anywhere else in the world. By monitoring the information we give them when we go online, the company builds up an understanding of its users, which helps them target advertising. If you open up a Google account, you do clearly agree to the company’s privacy policy. But if you don’t, there is no explicit warning about what information is being retained.

It could mean that everybody is being spied on, so we are, we are moving into a surveillance society, where all the information on everything we do and say is being collected and passed on.

The law is clear: Consent must be given by any appropriate method enabling a freely given specific and informed indication of the user’s wishes, including by ticking a box when visiting an Internet website.

In fact, there’s no direct link to the company’s privacy policy on the Google homepage. An independent panel is advising the European Commission on whether Google is complying with European Privacy Regulations. We understand that the company may be required to put up a cigarette-box style privacy warning telling users what information it collects, what it will be used for and for how long it will be kept. These recommendations are also likely to apply to Google’s smaller rivals.