Consumer products giant Procter & Gamble (P&G) plans to introduce privacy monitoring software worldwide to deal with varying information laws.

The manufacturer of products such as Pampers, Olay and Sunny D, has installed the online monitoring tools in the US, and plans to introduce similar software in the UK, Europe and rest of the world shortly.

Automated data privacy auditing software will check P&G's consumer web sites, ensuring they meet data privacy laws relating to cookie regulation, opt-in marketing and advertising to children.

Using the WebCentral product from supplier Coast, P&G's data privacy team can monitor its hundreds of web sites, ensure they meet with local legal requirements, and send marketing managers and web design agencies reports on how their site is performing, Susan Welch, P&G's global privacy manager told Computing.

And by checking web sites and cataloguing online content P&G expects to reduce the time it takes to pinpoint vulnerabilities, so IT staff can spend time on other projects.

'We have over 120 unique URLs in the US alone, as well as new web sites becoming live on a routine basis,' said Welch.

'This makes managing corporate content for compliance to privacy rules a manually intense and challenging effort.'

Coast's software will allow P&G to tailor programmes so that they take into account different local laws and compliance requirements.

'The software allows us to create different page rules,' said Welch.

'For example, in the US you can't market to children of a certain age - so we can build in safeguards.'

After installing the software in the US, P&G plans to roll out similar tools in Europe.

'One of the first places we will go to is the UK because we don't have a language issue,' said Welch.

'We can customise it depending on laws and requirements in different countries.'

P&G has also decided to incorporate European Union data privacy directives into its global information management policy, to simplify marketing processes worldwide.