Yahoo Joins Search Privacy Bandwagon

Yahoo is cutting its data retention time, and leaping ahead of the competition by going to just 13 months before anonymizing.

Yahoo is joining other search engines in changing its privacy policy. And it’s trying to push ahead of its rivals. The company has announced it willanonymize data after only 13 months, less than the 18 months announced by Google, Microsoft and Ask.com.   Although Yahoo hasn’t announced when it will implement the decision, it hopes to move forward as soon as possible – and it will need to, tocompete in the privacy marketplace. Ask.com has rolled out its AskEraser tool for privacy, which allows the user the choice of whether the search engine retains any data.   A lot of this hasbeen prompted by an EU group investigating Google’s privacy policies on search data, which prompted the giant to cut its retention time from 24 months to 18, a move rapidly followed by others.But Yahoo has decided to go even further. According to company spokesman Jim Cullen,   “Yahoo’s new global policy is: All search log data will be anonymized within 13 months of collectionexcept where users request otherwise or where Yahoo is required to retain the information to comply with legal obligations. We believe the 13 month policy is the appropriate timeline to meet ourcommitment to our users’ privacy while preserving our ability to continue to continue to defend against fraudulent activity and improve our services to advertisers, publishers and users.”  Yahoo is currently the number two search engine, behind Google.