Google is cutting the length of time it retains user IP addresses captured by its server logs from 18 months down to 9 months.
IP addresses are the unique numbers that computers—or network gateways—use to communicate with the rest of the Internet, and in many circumstances (often in conjunction with cookies and log analysis techniques) they can sometime be used to identify individual Internet users, which potentially threatens their privacy.
Today, Google cut that 18-month retention time for IP addresses in half, reducing it to 9 months. Google's action is again in response to possible regulatory concerns—the EU is considering a 6-month retention time for data like IP addresses—but the company says it hopes the 9 month retention will give the company enough data to create innovative new services—including fraud prevention technologies—without compromising users' privacy.
Interestingly, one of the first things noted in the response is the link to Google's privacy policy which was added in July of this year; however, it's unclear if they really made that move in response to Article 29 or in response to California's requests (as indicated in my prior post). Either way, at least it was done.
But while Google announces a shorter data retention length, newcomers such as Cuil retain no data at all. Fleischer also noted all the kinks aren't worked out yet.
Added Peter Fleischer, global privacy counsel for Google: "We haven't sorted out all of the implementation details, and we may not be able to use precisely the same methods for anonymizing as we do after 18 months, but we are committed to making it work."
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