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Google Urged To Let Personal Data Fade Away

Posted by timothy on from the dust-in-the-wind dept.

jee4all writes with this excerpt from E-week: "Researchers say personal information should 'degrade' — becoming less specific over time — to protect users' privacy. Rather than amassing personal data and holding on to it as long as legally possible, companies such as Google should allow the data to degrade over time, according to researchers. In an interview with the BBC this week, Dutch researcher Harold van Heerde discussed his work on the idea of allowing data to becomes less specific over time. Letting the specifics gradually disappear could protect consumer privacy while also meeting the needs of service providers, he said."

2 of 116 comments (clear)

  1. Stupid phrasing by JakeD409 · · Score: 2, Informative

    companies such as Google should allow the data to degrade over time

    Phrasing like this pisses me off. If Google's data degraded over time, it's not that they'd be "allowing" it to degrade, they'd have to do extra work and write extra code to force it to degrade. Saying "allow" implies that degrading is what data do naturally, and that Google is somehow artificially preserving it.

    1. Re:Stupid phrasing by The+MESMERIC · · Score: 2, Informative

      But Google is ARTIFICIALLY preserving it.
      It is called PageRank. It strengthens OVER time.

      (Damn I give up!)