Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Microsoft Does As Little As It Possibly Can To Meet Privacy Demands

"Microsoft will eliminate all data collected on Bing users after six months. The software giant said it sent a letter to the Article 29 Data Protection Working Party, a collection of the EU's top minds on data protection and privacy issues, today notifying it that the company would reduce the amount of time it stores IP addresses from searchers from 18 months to six months before deleting them.

Currently, Bing takes search data and separates the user's account information (such as e-mail or phone number) from the non-personal information (such as what the query was) and only after 18 months does Microsoft take the additional step of deleting the IP address and any other cross session IDs associated with the query. The only difference with the new policy is that the IP address will be removed completely at six months to provide greater user privacy protection; the rest of the process will remain the same, since Microsoft says it needs the data to make search better for consumers."

Ars Technica - Microsoft to delete Bing users' IP addresses after 6 months

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