Britain's data watchdog is investigating complaints that Google is breaking privacy laws, raising the prospect of multi-million pound fines for the company.

The Information Commissioner’s Office is investigating whether the Search giant has broken the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which came into force last year. If found to be in breach Google faces fines of up to 4pc of its global turnover - which by 2017’s figures could be as much as $4bn (£3.1bn).

The Californian tech giant was this month slapped with a €50m (£44m) fine from French regulators for breaching what is being lauded as the law for the digital age. Regulators in Paris found it failed to explain how it is using personal information to sell users advertising, particularly through its Android smartphone operating system, according to a statement from the supervisory authority CNIL.

In preparation for GDPR, Google said it invested heavily in tweaking its “transparency tools”, which it claimed made it easier for people to understand the depth of what they were exchanging for its free and paid-for products.

There is no option for consumers to opt out of data collection, other than to close all their accounts and request their data is deleted.