Google adds privacy protection
Google modifies its data retention so that it would make harder the specific computers used in searches to be identified.
Google,s servers log information every time someone searches the web and keeps data such as the keywords used,Internet Protocol Address and information web cookies.
As the new policy of Google,announced on wednesday,the last eight bits from the ip address and cookie data will be annonymized after a period between 18 and 24 months unless legally required to retain the data for longer.But the logs will still continue on a indefinite term.
“Logs anonymization does not guarantee that the government will not be able to identify a specific computer or user, but it does add another layer of privacy protection to our users’ data,” the company said.
But there are other opposite points of view:
“I don’t think the Google proposal is adequate. This period is too long and it’s not in fact data destruction, it’s more data de-identification, and that should be happening in 18 to 24 hours, not months,” said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. “I’m not persuaded that this isn’t still a ticking time bomb for Google’s search engine.”
Richard M. Smith, an Internet security and privacy consultant at Boston Software Forensics, said Google should never be archiving the IP address and cookies on servers. “Google should not be in the spy business,” he said. “By logging IP addresses and search strings they are running the largest intelligence operation in the world.”
“For most average consumers that is pretty much anonymous,” because many people connect to the Internet through large companies that dynamically assign IP addresses, making it even harder to determine exactly which person conducted a search, said Ari Schwartz, deputy director for the Center for Democracy and Technology. “It is a risk, but it is better than what we have today.”
Kevin Bankston, staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said he would like to see Google scrub the entire IP address within six months, but praised Google for making this “positive first step.”
“We hope other online service providers will heed this example and work to minimize the amount of data they keep about their customers,” Bankston said.
Google,s rivals like Yahoo and Microsoft did not disclose any information about their retention policies
AOL saves personally-identifiable search data for up to 30 days in a way that’s visible to the user and uses an encryption hashing technique to obscure it thereafter, said AOL spokesman Andrew Weinstein.
Anyhow,what I wonder after such news,do we have privacy?I think we just like to believe so,so do like me,be paranoid and never trust any kind of software,learn a lot about software privacy and buy privacy protection software,but never completely trust even those ones,you know the word,the route to hell is paved with good intentions…
Source:http://news.zdnet.com/
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