Microsoft To Delete Bing IP Data After 6 Months

adeelarshad82 writes "Bowing to pressure from the EU, Microsoft said it would discard all data collected via its Bing search engine after six months. (Microsoft's announcement contains a timeline for what data gets anonymized or deleted when.) Until now, the software giant has retained the data for 18 months. Over the past two years, however, Internet companies such as Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google have made efforts to reduce the amount of time that information is stored. Microsoft's policies will remain the same, but now, the company will delete the IP address and other info after six months. Back in December 2008, Microsoft said it would reduce its retention time to six months, but only if its rivals followed suit. At the time, Yahoo anonymized its data after 13 months, and Google did the same after 9 months. A week later, Yahoo cut that time down to three months, but Google said its decisions are not conditioned on what competitors do."

Comments

Re:Privacy

[Uranium-238]

One of my professors last semestor asked us a similar question: "Do you want your DNA to be stored indefinitely on a national database?" To which I said good lord no! I was then asked what I have or might have to hide in the future and I said nothing, merely my privacy and my genetic code. I added as a joke Enjoy the terrorists making bio weapons tailored to your DNA.

Re:Privacy

[negRo_slim]

We want privacy - give it to us.

Who is this we you speak of? Your average internet user really doesn't seem to give a damn as long as they can get what they want quickly and easily. Just look at the success of some of these games on social networking sites. Like Mafia Wars for instance; basically nothing more than a database with a shitty HTML front end that offers no real game play or player interactions yet people eat it up, allowing companies like Zynga to scrap profile data or serve them "customer surveys" or "trail offers" and "free products"... People fill that crap out trading their privacy for an increase in an arbitrary value in some shitty "app".

Hah

[dedazo]

Google won't follow suit? The difference here is that Bing is a loss leader for Microsoft. People want more privacy? No problem sez Microsoft, whatever. It's not like they live off the data they mine from their search engine users (which last I heard was something like 4% of the total in the US).

For Google, government-mandated privacy regulations can really hurt the bottom line. That data and how long they can hold on to it is essentially their business model.

I actually wouldn't be surprised to see Microsoft become a champion of consumer privacy on the Internet later on... you know, for the children.

Re:Selective privacy

[Enderandrew]

Normally I'm not one to bother responding to ACs, but what in the hell are you talking about?

Yahoo handed over Chinese bloggers.

Google has only handed over private info on their users once and that was after REPEATED court orders. They didn't even comply with the first order from a judge.

The info they eventually handed over was a ring of users sharing child pornography on Orkut.

I've literally had this exact same conversation several times on Slashdot before, and not once has anyone provided a single ounce of proof that Google hands over your private data, save for that one instance.