By Eric Auchard 1 hour, 17 minutes ago
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) -
Google Inc on Monday defended a
policy of retaining data on Web users for up to 18 months as
necessary to improve search results, responding to an EU report
that saw no need for search services to keep personal data
beyond six months.
A group of data protection commissioners from across the
European Union found that computer Web addresses and cookie
monitoring are personal information that search services should
do more to protect.
The long-anticipated set of recommendations for how
European data protection laws should be applied to Web search
services was published on Friday and can be found at
http://tinyurl/5yukzm.
The report by the so-called Article 29 Working Party calls
for increased user notification and warns Web search services
that fail to do so may be unlawful.
Cookies are small bits of text that mark the comings and
goings of computer users to Web sites. They are widely used by
commercial sites to make Web surfing more convenient and by
advertisers to measure audiences. But they also raise privacy
concerns due to their potential to track user behavior.
"It is the opinion of the Working Party that search engines
in their role as collectors of user data have so far
insufficiently explained the nature and purpose of their
operations to the users of their services," the report states.
"The Working Party does not see a basis for a retention
period beyond 6 months," the study concludes.
In a statement issued on Monday, Peter Fleischer, Google's
global privacy counsel, said his company disagreed with key
findings in the report and argued that privacy policies must be
balanced against efforts to make Web services easier to use.
"We believe that data retention requirements have to take
into account the need to provide quality products and services
for users, like accurate search results, as well as system
security and integrity concerns," Fleischer wrote.
IMPROVING SERVICES?
The EU report specifically challenges the defense by saying
arguments about improving services may conceal other uses that
go beyond the original reasons the data was collected.
His blog post can be read at http://tinyurl/3jkdy8/.
"Based on our own analysis, we believe that whether or not
an IP address is personal data depends on how the data is being
used," Fleischer said. Google has previously argued the issue
is not black and white, in part because Internet Service
Providers often allot the same IP address to many users.
Google Web services generate mountains of more or less
anonymous user data that it stores securely in massive computer
data centers it operates. The company's engineers regularly
study this data to figure out how to improve its services.
While traditionally Internet companies have stored data on
Web surfers for years, Google took the initiative a year ago to
limit how long it stored such data to 18 months.
Rival search services followed suit to set their own
limits, with Ask going a step further by offering a set of
tools for users to scrub their data stored from Ask computers.
(editing by Elizabeth Fullerton)
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