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Yahoo Will Render User Data Anonymous After 90 Days

  • CNet, Wednesday, December 17, 2008 10:45 AM
The "race to the bottom" on data-retention policies continued on Wednesday as Yahoo announced it would anonymize user data after 90 days, which replaces its previous policy of purging all data after 13 months.

All the major search engines have been reducing the amount of time they keep user data identifiable under pressure from regulators: Google recently changed its policy from 18-months to just nine, for example. At issue is whether consumer privacy trumps the search engine's right to use that data to improve their services.

Yahoo said 90 days strikes the perfect balance between privacy and business interests. It also said it would make user data on page views, page clicks, ad views and ad clicks anonymous as well as its user logs.

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