14 DAY TRIAL // Last week, Microsoft announced support for a six-month deadline for search data anonymisation in accordance with the limitations that the European Union aimed to impose on search providers. At that time, John Vassallo, vice president, EU Affairs and associate general counsel, along with Peter Cullen, chief privacy strategist at Microsoft, indicated that the Redmond company would comply with the European Union's Article 29 Working Party, only if additional players on the search engine market did the same. On December 17, 2008, Yahoo topped Microsoft by announcing a new global data retention policy, indicating that it would ensure the anonymisation of search engine data after just 90 days.
"In our world of customized online services, responsible use of data is critical to establishing and maintaining user trust," Anne Toth, Yahoo's vice president of Policy and head of Privacy explained. "We know that our users expect relevant and compelling content and advertising when they visit Yahoo, but they also want assurances that we are focused on protecting their privacy."
Yahoo indicated that the new 90-day short deadline for data retention was designed to increase the privacy of its 500 million users worldwide. The Sunnyvale Internet giant pointed out that only in the case of exceptions involving fraud, security, and legal obligations would data be retained for more than 90 days.
According to the no. 2 provider on the search engine market, the experience of end-users, as well as the benefits of advertisers using its ad infrastructure will not suffer any deterioration. Despite the 90-day limit, Yahoo will also make sure that system specific data will not be anonymized for up to six months, but only in the context of the company's efforts to improve security and fight fraud.
"This policy represents Yahoo!'s assessment of the minimum amount of time we need to retain data in order to respond to the needs of our business while deepening our trusted relationship with users," Toth added. "We're proud this new policy sets a new benchmark for the industry."