We have now verified that we are no longer detecting PII being passed to Google

Some blog owners, who use AdSense, received some very disturbing email this weekend.

This morning I received the following email from Google.

Dear Publisher,

We have now verified that we are no longer detecting PII being passed to Google from the account(s) under your control.

Thank you for helping to resolve this matter.

Regards,

The Google Policy Team

What did I do, this time? Is my AdSense account in danger of being terminated?

And the email was labeled “Policy Breach Notice”.

Fortunately, this was, apparently, just another episode of Google being Google.

Personally Identifiable Information, or PII, can be spread through some ads, hosted by AdSense – when improperly installed in our blogs.

Some time ago, AdSense identified a common mistake by some AdSense Publishers (owners of blogs and websites which contain AdSense hosted ads), which can cause some AdSense ads to transmit personal details about us and our Google accounts. They refer to these details as “PII”.

AdSense presumably notified the negligent publishers of their mistakes, as a “Policy Breach Notice”. This weekend, they followed up on their previous action, by informing people that they were not now in violation.

Presumably, they could have notified only the errant publishers, who had made and corrected their mistakes – and “thanked” them for taking action. In this case, however, they notified a large amount of people who had never mode this mistake, who had never received an original “breach notice”, and who had no idea why they were now getting a “breach notice”.

Whether the proper notice recipients received the “thank you” is a matter for speculation.

If you, or someone who you know, received a “Policy Breach Notice”, advising you

We have now verified that we are no longer detecting PII being passed to Google from the account(s) under your control.

Thank you for helping to resolve this matter.

This is good. You are not in violation of the PII Policy. Get back to work, on your blog.