In a move to one-up its search-engine rivals, Yahoo on Wednesday announced a new global data-retention policy that far surpasses what Google and Microsoft have proposed.
Indeed, Yahoo is setting the industry standard for data retention with its promise to anonymize user log data within 90 days — with limited exceptions for fraud, security and legal obligations. Yahoo is also expanding its policy to apply not only to search-log data but also page views, page clicks, ad views, and ad clicks.
“In our world of customized online services, responsible use of data is critical to establishing and maintaining user trust,” said Anne Toth, Yahoo’s vice president of policy. “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 Gets Aggressive
Privacy advocates, including European Union regulators, have put pressure on search engines to slash data-storage times. The current industry standard is 18 months. Microsoft last week told European regulators it’s ready to cut the time it holds users’ search data from 18 months to six months — if other search-engine companies do the same.
“What we’ve done since April is evaluate the multiple uses of search data to ascertain if we can, in time, move to a six-month time frame,” said Peter Cullen, Microsoft’s chief privacy strategist. “Our answer is yes, we can, but we don’t believe it makes sense for us to make this change until our competitors also commit to meeting this higher standard with respect to both the method and time frame for anonymization.”
Yahoo isn’t waiting for other search engines to cooperate. Instead, the heads of the business and engineering units at Yahoo worked with the privacy and data-governance teams to review data needs. Their goal was to ensure that Yahoo retains…