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EU: 18 Months Too Long To Keep Search Data
David Utter
Staff Writer
2008-04-07
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The Article 29 Data Protection Working Party in Europe wants search engines to commit to a much shorter period of data retention than they enjoy today.
 | | EU: 18 Months Too Long To Keep Search Data |  |
If the EU enforces the suggestion, search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft may have to dramatically reduce their data retention to six months.
Bloomberg noted last week's two-day meeting of the Article 29 Data Protection Working Party, where all 27 member nations could embrace the recommendation of their privacy protection officials. That would reduce the retention time to a mere six months for search data.
Google switched to an 18-month retention policy when privacy advocates in Europe complained of its practices. Microsoft also observes an 18-month policy; Yahoo holds search data for 13 months. The in-flux Ask.com offers visitors the option to use Ask Eraser to delete their search history on an ongoing basis, but that policy does not affect the data passed to Google for search ads displayed on Ask.
In July 2007, Google announced its plan to anonymize data after 18 months. Last month, Google began posting about the topic of retaining log data for various uses. Among them, Google noted the need to identify security threats and to improve services like the spell checker in Google search.
All three major search engines agree on protecting the privacy of the user information they receive. We must note however that when the Alberto Gonzales-led Justice Department came calling with requests for search data, Google was the only search engine to end up in a public court fight with DoJ over this. Yahoo, Microsoft, and other subjects of the DoJ's reach quietly complied.
We completely missed the bit where they stood up for search privacy at the time. The EU recommendation of six months of retention may help Microsoft and Yahoo refresh their memories about the topic.
View All Articles by David Utter
About the Author:
David Utter is a business and technology writer for SecurityProNews and WebProNews.
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