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:Glass half full?

[twidarkling]

I've never understood this "Government is evil, but corporations are good" mentality. You're fine with private companies keeping your data, so long as they don't give it to the government.

You do realize that both are made up of people? The main difference is that if the government pisses off people, the specific people in charge will be removed, whereas with a company, they have to piss off shareholders. No, wait, I'm sorry, there is no difference. Both want your money, both don't really care about you beyond getting that money. The more information they have on you, the easier it is to manipulate you, the easier their task becomes. At least the Government takes care of things like National Defence, and keeping roads in working order. Companies will give you whatever they damn well feel like giving you.