by Greg Beck
Google announced last week a new policy designed to help protect the privacy of its users. Google will continue to store usage history, but it will "anonymize" its server logs after 18-24 months so that particular data can no longer be linked to individual users.
Google could have gone a lot further. Keeping the data for 18-24 months seems like a long time when something like 30 days or less may be sufficient. Moreover, Google has argued that keeping personally identifying information helps it provide services to its users, but those users who value privacy over the additional services should have a way to opt out of the data collection.
Still, criticism of Google's decision conceals the fact that it has gone a lot further than other Internet companies. Yahoo!'s privacy policy, for example, states that the company will save your IP address and the pages that you view without promising to delete or anonymize this information at any time in the future. Amazon.com says it stores your IP address and other information, including which books you looked at on the site. There is no reason why Amazon needs to keep databases with the books you looked at years ago.
Google's first step may be tentative, but hopefully it will spur other companies to examine their privacy policies as well and ask themselves whether they really need to keep all that private data.
Exactly! I call this phenomenon Data Rape and it refers to the danger that WE are in because a company takes and keeps data they don't need for anything but their own gratification.
Posted by: Jeremy | Wednesday, March 21, 2007 at 06:58 AM