This week Yahoo released a new policy on data retention. Under the policy, the number two search engine will anonymize its users log data within 90 days.
Few exceptions will be made for fraud, security and legal obligations. The policy will additionally apply to page views, page clicks, ad views and ad clicks. The previous policy was to hold data for up to 13 months.
“Yahoo been a longtime leader in privacy issues, and data retention is clearly key issue in privacy,” Kelley Benander, a Yahoo spokesperson, told DMNews. “We reviewed the entire business globally to find the minimum standard of time needed…and to make sure it would not impact our services for users, our research, analysis or ad systems.”
The review process took about a year, she said.
Consumer Watchdog, a nonprofit consumer group, immediately called on Google to match Yahoo’s policy. Google currently has a policy of retaining data for nine months. Microsoft has an 18-month policy.
Yahoo said the policy would not impact user experience or ad systems.
