Google Will Anonymize IP Logs Faster

An anonymous reader writes "The BBC reports on some changes to the data retention policy at Google in response to pressure from European authorities, but also included in the article is information about why Google claims they need to retain non-anonymised data for so long. Improving services, sure, but preventing fraud? Aiding 'valid legal orders'?" Reader s0ckratees points to some commentary on the change at Google's official blog. The upshot: IP addresses in Google's logs will be anonymized after nine months, rather than 18 as previously.

Comments

Re:9 Months

[Anonymous Coward]

YouTube == Google So yes.

9 months are too long

[AtomicJake]

Actually, the IP should not be stored at all. Google might want to analyze the IPs to analyze and prevent attacks on its servers and additionally to get location information for its ad services. But there is no need to store it for a longer period -- unless you want to start massive data mining projects, which is exactly what is feared most from a privacy point of view.

So, any good news would be that the IP is not stored at all (except very temporarily).

Google anonymizing in China/India

[ilovesymbian]

What difference does it make to reduce this 18 months to 9 months log retention period?

Will Google anonymize logs in other countries too?

How about Google China? It respectfully hands over logs to the authorities on demand anytime. Same with Google India.

Re:Clusty

[jsalbre]

Their privacy policy specifically says that they DO keep logs of your IP and search queries.

do the anonymizing yourself

[cats-paw]

Tor isn't great for high bandwidth connections, but I think it's just perfect to make sure all of those do-gooder large corporations don't get a choice about anonymizing IP addresses.

http://www.torproject.org/