Google is asking the United Nations Friday to do its part to protect Internet users' privacy around the world.

Peter Fleischer, the company's privacy chief, is asking both governments and businesses to agree on international privacy standards at a UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) conference in Strasbourg. As information now instantaneously makes its way around the world via the Internet, a new set of rules needs to apply internationally to so that Web users do not lose confidence in privacy protection, which will hamper the Internet's development by a rise of online crimes, he told the Guardian.

“Three quarters of the countries in the world have no privacy regimes at all and among those that do have laws, many of them were largely adopted before the rise of the internet,” he is quoted by the Guardian as saying. “It's said that every time you use a credit card, your details are passed through six different countries. We're talking about this to help set the framework for the Internet of the future.”

Fleischer said that although huge amounts of data are outsourced to India from the United States and Europe, India has no privacy regulation. “Europeans and Americans want to know their privacy is protected, and Indians themselves, as they come online, will also want these protections,” he told the Guardian.

Google has already discussed privacy issues with some privacy regulators in Europe, including some in Spain and France, and is looking to the United Nations or the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development to take on promoting privacy standards globally.