Reuters and Yahoo! News report that Google has agreed to cut the amount of time it stores users' web surfing habits from 18 month to only nine months. This is quite a significant drop, especially when taking into account that in March 2007 Google had no policy and kept the information for an indefinite period of time. Google's new policies, "are part of a broader trend that is increasing across the industry for companies to compete in good privacy practices," according to Google's global privacy counsel Peter Fleischer.
Along with the new nine month data retention policy, Google plans to anonymize the data much more quickly. Could this be in response to the Viacom/YouTube issue? This is is a great precautionary measure to protect our Internet privacy from companies like Viacom that want to sue Google so they can obtain users' records. After nine months the data and the IP address are disassociated and the data can no longer be tracked back to a specific user.
The move to an 18-month data retention policy came about due to the European Union putting pressure on Google to increase their privacy measures. The new nine-month policy was adapted to further refine Google's privacy protection and keep users much safer while surfing the Internet. The new nine month policy makes Google the alpha male, as far as privacy is concerned. Microsoft still keeps data for 18 months and Yahoo! currently retains data for 13 months.
While this is good news for anyone who surfs the Internet, it is important to remember that your data is being tracked and recorded. Data retention policies are extremely helpful, but ultimately privacy must begin with you. Using an anonymous proxy server will help you be invisible and maintain anonymity while surfing and stay one step ahead of even the most favorable data retention policies.
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