Yahoo! to Clear User Search Records After Three Months

By Greg McNevin

December 19, 2008: Much to the approval of privacy advocates everywhere, Yahoo! has moved to cut its search record retention time from 13 to 3 months, at the same time urging Google to lead the way towards a policy of zero retention of search data.

Currently, every search engine retains data such as IP addresses, search terms and more whenever a query is made, with more and more personal information stacking up over time as users use their favourite engines.

Providers argue that the data is required to provide quality services and protection from malicious users, however, privacy experts say that to protect personal privacy nothing but a zero-day policy on storage will do.

The move comes in the face of pressure from European Union regulators, who want search engines to only store a maximum of six-months worth of information, after which all data would be anonymised.

Yahoo! has gone one step further, in an “attempt to put a stake in the ground" on the issue the company’s vice president of policy and privacy chief Anne Toth told Reuters, however, while it is ahead of major rivals Google and Microsoft at this point, it still has a little way to go to catch up with Ask.com, which gives users the option of “opting out” of having their data stored, and having their tracks anonymised within a few hours.

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