Are Yahoo!'s privacy changes just window dressing?

By Stephen Withers
Thursday, 18 December 2008 08:57

Opinion and Analysis

Yahoo claims it is setting a "new industry standard" for data retention, but look beyond the headlines and you might not be so impressed.

First the good news: Yahoo says it will now anonymise within 90 days user log data concerning search, page views, page clicks, ad views and ad clicks.

"This policy represents Yahoo!'s assessment of the minimum amount of time we need to retain data in order to respond to the needs of our business while deepening our trusted relationship with users," said Anne Toth, Yahoo!'s vice president of policy and head of privacy.

"We're proud this new policy sets a new benchmark for the industry."

Okay, but are there any exceptions?

Silly question - of course there are!

"In order to fight fraud and preserve system security, Yahoo! will retain system specific data in identifiable form for no more than 6 months - but only for this purpose," stated company officials.

What other non-anonymised data will be retained, and for how long? Please read on.