Yahoo Beats Google on Privacy

God bless Yahoo. They are taking privacy concerns seriously.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Yahoo Inc. said Wednesday that it will shorten the amount of time that it retains data about its users' online behavior — including Internet search records — to three months from 13 months and expand the range of data that it "anonymizes" after that period...

In September, Google said it would "anonymize," or mask, the numeric Internet Protocol (IP) addresses on its server logs after nine months, down from a previous period of 18 months. And Microsoft, which keeps user data for 18 months, said last week it would support an industry standard of six months.

Under Yahoo's new policy, the company will strip out portions of users' IP addresses, alter small tracking files known as "cookies" and delete other potential personally identifiable information after 90 days in most cases. In cases involving fraud and data security, the company will anonymize the data after six months.

Anne Toth, vice president of policy and head of privacy for Yahoo, said the company is adopting the new policy to build trust with users and differentiate it from its competitors. Yahoo also hopes to take the issue of data retention "off the table" by showing that Internet companies can regulate themselves, Toth said.

European Union regulators have pressured Yahoo, Google and Microsoft over the past year to shorten the amount of time that they hold onto user data. And Congress has begun asking questions about the extent to which Internet and telecommunications companies track where their users go online and use that information to target personalized advertising.

Now will Google follow their lead?

Labels: privacy, search, yahoo

The fastest browser is Google Chrome

About the new Chrome 1.0, the first version of Google Chrome out of beta, PC Magazine says:

The retest shows a 24 percent speed improvement, bringing this released browser to the same level of performance as Firefox's second beta 3.1 version. The new numbers far outstrip what Microsoft's Internet Explorer was capable of, by a factor of nearly 100, and even bested the released version of Firefox 3.0's results more than threefold.

I'm generally pleased with Chrome but still have privacy concerns. I think Google needs to put in place an opt-out feature.

Labels: browsers, chrome, privacy

Google's Cookies Live For HOW LONG?

I was amused to read this blog post from Google official blog:

After listening to feedback from our users and from privacy advocates, we've concluded that it would be a good thing for privacy to significantly shorten the lifetime of our cookies — as long as we could find a way to do so without artificially forcing users to re-enter their basic preferences at arbitrary points in time. And this is why we’re announcing a new cookie policy.

In the coming months, Google will start issuing our users cookies that will be set to auto-expire after 2 years, while auto-renewing the cookies of active users during this time period.

LOL. Are they serious??? Two years is significantly shorter than what? 10 years? What did they have it at before?

Labels: cookies, google, privacy

Google Chrome Privacy Problems

From the ACLU of Nothern California:

Google Suggest is a new Chrome feature that suggests possible completions for partial search queries, such as when you misspell a Web address or otherwise encounter an error. This feature comes at a high price paid with personal data, however. Every keystroke typed into a Google Suggest-enabled area is sent to Google, along with your IP address and any Google account information stored in cookies on the user’s computer.

While Google Suggest is found in several products, it is particularly problematic in Chrome because Chrome features only a single input area, called the OmniBox, for entering both URLs and search queries. Chrome users are thus likely to send information about all of their Internet activity to Google, not just search queries.

Google says they will "anonymize" the data they collect:

To provide its recommendations Google Suggest needs to know what you've already typed, so these partial queries are sent to Google. For 98% of these requests, we don't log any data at all and simply return the suggestions. For the remaining 2% of cases (which we select randomly), we do log data, like IP addresses, in order to monitor and improve the service.

However, given the concerns that have been raised about Google storing this information -- and its limited potential use -- we decided that we will anonymize it within about 24 hours (basically, as soon as we practically can) in the 2% of Google Suggest requests we use.

But bloggers are calling bullshit:

Google has now revealed that it will change "some" of the bits of the IP address after 9 months, but less than the eight bits that it masks after the full 18 months. Thus, instead of Google's customers being able to hide among 254 other Internet users, perhaps they'll be able to hide among 64, or 127 other possible IP addresses.
By itself, this is a laughable level of anonymity. However, it gets worse.
First, remember that Google will not delete or anonymize user cookies from the logs when it slightly smudges IP addresses after nine months. Second, remember that as long as you use a Google Web property at least once every two years, the company will maintain a unique identifiable cookie value within your Web browser.

The alternative to Chrome is Iron but who knows if they can keep up with development. Chrome should have its own opt-out system. It's not hard to implement, and most people won't even bother to opt-out so they'll still get the data they want while protecting privacy of people who want that privacy. So why won't Google just do it? Don't be evil!

Labels: chrome, iron, privacy