Europe Wants Search Engines to Delete Data Sooner
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Written By Sepideh Saremi | April 7, 2008 | Share This
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The European Commission may soon tell search engines to delete user data within six months, the BBC reports, after a report found that search engine data storage might not do enough to protect user privacy. From the Beeb:
The report from the Article 29 Data Protection Working Party said search engine providers had “insufficiently explained” why they were storing and processing personal data to their users.
It said “search engine providers must delete or irreversibly anonymise personal data once they no longer serve the specified and legitimate purpose they were collected for”.
The report said the personal data of users should not be stored or processed “beyond providing search results” if the user had not created an account or registered with the search engine.
Currently, Google keeps data associated with users for as long as eighteen months, but then anonymizes its data logs. Google’s Public Policy blog didn’t waste any time responding to the EC:
We believe that data retention requirements have to take into account the need to provide quality products and services for users, like accurate search results, as well as system security and integrity concerns. We have recently discussed some of the many ways that using this data helps improve users’ experience, from making our products safe, to preventing fraud, to building language models to improve search results. This perspective — the ways in which data is used to improve consumers’ experience on the web — is unfortunately sometimes lacking in discussions about online privacy.
Though Google acknowledges that discussion about online privacy when it comes to search and its other products is needed, it doesn’t actually initiate the dialogue or take a real position in this post. Understandable - now that Google owns DoubleClick and will have its hand in more targeted advertising, more user privacy doesn’t help its bottom line. Same goes for Yahoo and Microsoft.
More:
- Charlie Cooper of CNET breaks it down.
Topics: Google, International, Search: News |