Topic: Microsoft increases privacy for Bing users

[Samker]

Microsoft announced today that they will be increasing the level of privacy on Bing for its users, by deleting the entire log containing the Internet Protocol address associated with search queries after six months, rather than the original 18 months: http://microsoftontheissues.com/cs/blogs/mscorp/archive/2010/01/18/microsoft-advances-search-privacy-with-bing.aspx 
The new policy will take effect within the next 12 to 18 months.

The new privacy practices will increase the level of privacy for Bing users to de-identify the data, taking information such as name and address, than performing a full IP Address removal after six months.  After 18 months, Microsoft will remove all of the users log data associated with the query including cookie ID and any other remaining cross-session IDs.

Bing now complies with group 27 European national data protection regulators, while Google still keeps associated user data longer than the maximum allowed six months.  Google may feel the pressure to comply with the European regulators to change their user data storage methods.  Yahoo! has already reduced the time it stores user data to 90 days.

(Neowin)