Transcript

Tuesday September 9, 2008

Google Modifies Privacy Policy

Google Monday evening announced that it will cut the amount of time it stores users personal Internet search data in half, in effort to improve its privacy policy. Instead of storing search data associated with a users unique computer IP address for 18 months, the information will now only be stored for 9. Until a year and a half ago, Google had kept personally identifiable information about its Web users on company computers for an indefinite amount of time, but in response to pressure from the European Union and others Google modified their policy and became the first leading search engine to anonymize their search server logs in the interest of privacy. With the most recent change, Google has expressed concern that scaling back on the duration of time it stores user data could come at the cost of innovation, but the search giant remains confident that it will in time determine how to strike the right balance between privacy and innovation.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/another-step-to-protect-user-privacy.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idUSN0847077420080909

[edited by: Vanessa_Zamora at 4:22 pm (utc) on Sep. 9, 2008]