Internet users get reprieve on search records

Miguel Helft
International Herald Tribune
03-16-2007
Web search companies collect records of the searches that people conduct, a fact that has long generated fears among privacy advocates and some Internet users that valuable personal data could be misused. Now Google is taking a step to ease those concerns. The company keeps logs of all searches, along with digital identifiers linking them to specific computers and Internet browsers. It said Wednesday that it would start to make those logs anonymous after 18 months to 24 months, making it much harder to connect search records to a person.Under current practices, the company keeps the logs intact indefinitely. ''We have decided to make this change with feedback from privacy advocates, regulators worldwide and, of course, from our users,'' said Nicole Wong, Google's deputy general counsel.But it is unclear whether the change will have its intended effect.Privacy advocates reacted with a mix of praise and dismay to the decision.''This is really the first time we have seen them make a decision to try and work out the conflict between wanting to be pro-privacy and collecting all the world's information,'' said Ari Schwartz, deputy director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, an advocacy group. ''They are not going to keep a profile on you indefinitely.''Others were less enthusiastic.''I think it is an absolute disaster for online privacy,'' said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. Rotenberg said his organization has been trying to combat efforts by law enforcement officials to require online services to retain search records for long periods of time. He said that 18 months to 24 months was too long, and added that because of Google's dominant position, it would most likely set a de facto standard for data retention.Wong said Google uses the search data internally only to improve its search engine and other services. She added that Google would release search data only if compelled by a subpoena. Even so, Google was the only major search engine to resist a U.S. Justice Department subpoena for vast amounts of search data last year a move that drew praise from privacy advocates.Just how personally revealing such data can be became evident last year, when AOL released records of the searches conducted by 657,000 Americans for the benefit of researchers. While AOL did not identify the people behind the searches, reporters from The New York Times were able to track down some of them quickly through their search requests.The ensuing flap caused AOL to tighten its privacy policies. The company now keeps search histories for only 13 months.

2007 Copyright International Herald Tribune. http://www.iht.com