EUObserver.com reported that the "European Commission's data protection watchdog" prepared a draft stating search engines should not hold onto information longer than six months. Currently, some search engines hold onto data for up to 2 years (18 months for the big boys--Yahoo! and Google), which is a big no-no in regards to privacy.
The board stated in their draft that, "Search engine providers must delete or irreversibly anonymise personal data once they no longer serve the specified and legitimate purpose they were collected for." Also, the board added that the user must consent to search engines collecting and storing personal data.
The data collected by the search engines is done through the computer's IP address (which is basicially your identification while using the internet) and by placing cookies. A proxy server sounds like a good idea right about now...
The article also goes on to mention the AOL fiasco from 2006....a brief rundown of it: AOL put 650,000 users search information on the internet. It has already happened once in recent times, how much bigger could it be next time when Yahoo! or Google (the titans of search engines) accidently post information about everyone that uses the search engine? I think it will be worse...that's just my 2 cents.
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