Google queried on privacy policy

Found on BBC News on Friday, 25 May 2007
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Google has been told that it may be breaking European privacy laws by keeping people's search information on its servers for up to two years.

Peter Fleischer, Google's global privacy counsel, said the firm was committed to dialogue with the group.

"We believe it's an important part of our commitment to respect user privacy while balancing a number of important factors, such as maintaining security and preventing fraud and abuse," Mr Fleischer said.

Earlier this year Google said it would anonymise personal data it receives from users' web search after 18 to 24 months.

Google collects and stores data from each query. It holds information such as the search term itself, the unique address of the PC being used, known as the IP address, and details of how a user makes searches, such as the browser used and previous queries to Google.

Google has said it was using this information to help improve its different services and to monitor how its search engine was functioning.

I heavily doubt that Google doesn't store more information; after all, there are enough users who use a personalized Google, which makes it perfect to create a customer profile over years. If you have a dynamic IP and refuse cookies, each profile is only as detailed as it can get in one online session; but if you stay logged in and keep your cookies, it practically can analyze you over months and years. And nobody knows where your data ends. Google isn't doing that to make life easier for the user; it's not a charity. The data helps with things like targeted advertising; such profiles can be sold too. Luckily some tools help messing up this data, eg by randomising the User-Agent.