Google Cuts Data
Retention Length in Half
Search data to
be anonymized after nine months, instead of 18
Google
will now retain users’ search requests for half the amount of
time that it used to, promising to scrub its server logs for personally
identifiable data after nine months, instead of 18.
The
change was
announced on its official blog Monday evening.
Google
says it was initially reluctant to reduce its retention policies
because doing so would degrade the quality of its research data
– based heavily on search engine logs – which it
claims is a “critical ingredient” in its ongoing innovation.
“Over
the last two years, policymakers and regulators – especially
in Europe and the U.S. – have continued to ask us (and others
in the industry) to explain and justify this shortened logs retention
policy,” reads the post, which CNET attributes
to Google’s global privacy counsel Peter Fleischer.
“We responded by [explaining] how we were trying to strike
the right balance between sometimes conflicting factors like privacy,
security, and innovation. Some in the community of EU data protection
regulators continued to be skeptical of the legitimacy of logs
retention and demanded detailed justifications for this retention. Many
of these privacy leaders also highlighted the risks of litigants using
court-ordered discovery to gain access to logs, as in the
recent Viacom suit.”
You can read the rest of the story here.
Why
did Google do this you might wonder? I have a feeling this has to do
with the recent
and more intense scrutiny.
Why
you might wonder is everyone making such a big deal about this? Well
let’s just say that every time you use Google they are
recording every single move you make. What sites you visit, how often,
when, and including where you live and what the last site you visited
was. The goal is to have ads targeted at you that are more specific to
things you might like. But in the short run this means someone knowing
an awful lot about you that you might not want other people to know.
The risk runs deep because if you know your history you will know that
this type of information has been used against people in the past. This
wasn’t just Soviet Russia either this was going on right here
in our own country. In fact with the renewed Patriot Act Google could
secretly be giving up information to the government without your
consent or knowledge all with NO warrant! This is why everyone has been
"freaking out" about this. This isn’t just a conspiracy
anymore, it is fact. Whether Google does give up information to the
government or has done so remains to be seen, but let’s not
forget how quickly they turned off Human Rights
issues in China in order to get right to the
bottom line.
I
personally love Google. When I compare the lesser of 2 evils between
Microsoft and what Google is doing I cringe but somehow I keep thinking
Google is so nice. They have a nice image. They do nice things
but please let’s not let them stray too far.
Germany recently warned
its citizens about using Google’s new browser
chrome. Some might say Microsoft has been doing this sort of thing for
a long time and this is necessary to remain in the competition. I agree
because the way things are set up Google can't slack off now. But
let’s not give them too much power. Let’s have
"normal" advertising and just bombard us and brainwash like they used
to. My brain seems to like turning mushy instead of freaking out and
worrying about Big Brother watching me all the time.
If
you have something to say please leave a comment. I will try to comment
on your blog as well.
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Interesting. I never really gave much thought to google tracking that kind of thing. But since computers are computers, and it is easy to do, it all makes sense.