Google Agrees To Cut Data Retention Times

Under pressure from a European Union working group, Google has agreed to cut its data retention times by a quarter, from two years to 18 months.

In response to queries by the European Union Article 29 body, Google hasagreed to cut data retention times from two years to 18 months.   Article 29 had expressed concerns that Google’s old policy might have been breaking European privacy laws.   So whatis the data in question? Each time you make a Google search, the company retains the query, the IP address from which the search came, as well as other information, such as which browser was used.Google has argued that this information is vital for it to improve it services, fight malicious attacks from spam to hacking, and enable it to comply with requests from law enforcement. It had beenretaining that information for two years before it’s made anonymous – no longer associated with an individual.   Last month, the Article 29 group, working under the auspices of theEuropean Union, gave Google a month to respond to its privacy law concerns. In its reply, Google asserted that it was committed to data protection principles. The company’s global privacycounsel, Peter Fleischer, wrote:   “After considering the working party’s concerns, we are announcing a new policy: to anonymize our search server logs after 18 months, rather than thepreviously-established period of 18 to 24 months.”   Although the company admitted it could work with this shorter period of data retention, it said it would be impossible to be effectivewith any retention period of less than 18 months.   This isn’t necessarily the end of the story, however. The Article 29 group is meeting on June 20 and 21, during which time it will studyGoogle’s response.