Great news for privacy and a great challenge for Google, Yahoo and others came this Monday when Microsoft announced its support for the European Union’s Article 29 Working Party’s call for industry standards for search anonymization and submitted its written response to the Working Party’s opinion. They say that they are prepared to meet the Article 29 Working Party’s guidelines for search anonymization but believe it is imperative that all search companies adopt the same standard to truly protect people’s privacy.
After evaluating the multiple uses of search data, Microsoft believe that they can, move to a six month timeframe while retaining their strong method of anonymization. In short, Microsoft would be prepared to take these steps if all major search companies adopt an equivalent standard with respect to the timeframe and method of anonymization.
The Microsoft method for anonymizing search data is to delete the entirety of the IP address, as well as all other cross-session identifiers (such as persistent cookie IDs ).
While both an effective anonymization method and timeframe are needed to protect people’s privacy I believe that a thorough method is even more beneficial for privacy than the timeframe. A short timeframe coupled with a weak method will not yield significant privacy protections as data may be linked to an individual at a later date.
An article around this is to be found at www.nytimes.com/2008/12/09/technology/internet/09privacy.html?ref=technology
Regards, Per
Comments