Google backs down over user data
Search Engines
09 September 2008
Google has responded to concerns from regulators over its privacy policy for user data by reducing the amount of time it takes before it anonymises logs.
Peter Fleischer, Jane Horvath and Alma Whitten of Google said on the search engine's official blog that IP addresses will be made anonymous after nine months instead of 18 after being questioned by officials over how it handles user data.
They also emphasised that having access to such data has helped Google to make strides in improving search quality and security and tackling the problems of spam and fraud in the past.
"While we're glad that this will bring some additional improvement in privacy, we're also concerned about the potential loss of security, quality and innovation that may result from having less data," the trio commented.
Google's practice of anonymising IP addresses by removing portions of these does not offer a complete privacy solutions, as the search engine should ideally remove every bit of identifying information from its logs, Alissa Cooper of the Centre for Democracy & Technology told the Washington Post.
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