A fortnight ago, Europe’s top court, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled that Google will not be required to apply the ‘right to be forgotten’ globally. This means that search results suppressed within Europe at the request of the individual, will still be available to searches outside Europe.

Modern consumers are unlikely to be harmed by faulty wiring in their toasters. They might have been 60 years ago when Consumer NZ was founded. The work of consumer organisations in independently testing and holding substandard producers accountable has been critical in getting us to this point.

Our work doesn’t have to all be hard slog - especially at this time of the year, and nor do our blog posts. I thought I’d take a lead from Public Address and give a Friday post over to music that can loosely be linked to a privacy theme.

I had to buy a car for the teenager. OK, I didn’t have to but I wanted to. He could have bought himself a bomb but mother didn’t fancy the loss of sleep. It had to be something small and zippy (but not too zippy), and safe (like a zillion air bags safe).

Google Play recently made a change to the way it handles permissions when you download a new app. Permissions, in app speak, show you what parts of your Android phone the app will have access to. Whether it’s data - like your phone numbers; or hardware - like being able to play sound through your speakers, or access your GPS location, these permissions are generally necessary to help the app run.

The biggest thing in the privacy world just now seems to have exploded into the collective consciousness out of nowhere. For those of you with TLDR (Too Long Didn’t Read) syndrome, here’s the spoiler. The issue is not as clear cut as you might think. I’d like to hear a range of views about how we should approach this in New Zealand.