Yahoo to retain consumer data for 3 months only

California, December 19: As the shrieks for online privacy get louder, internet behemoth Yahoo vowed that it will retain data regarding the user’s Internet searches for a period of three months. By doing so Yahoo intends to appease internet surfers and gain competitive advantage over its arc rivals.

Earlier this year, Google had proclaimed that it will retain the individuals' search data for a period of nine months. Similarly Microsoft, in line with the European regulators proposal, had advocated a six-month standard. Anne Toth, Yahoo's vice president of policy and head of privacy while describing the company’s bold move said, "We want to take the issue of data retention off the table."

Alissa Cooper, chief computer scientist at the Center for Democracy & Technology maintained that Yahoo’s move will not end the privacy debate but it surely is a step forward in the right direction. U.S. representative Edward Markey, chairman of the house energy and commerce subcommittee on telecommunications and the Internet, intends to put forward an online bill of rights that will encompass issues like preservation of data and other electronic confidentiality matters.

Stressing the need for such a move, Markey, said, "I have been pressing online companies for greater voluntary efforts to refrain from the massive, systematic gathering of information about individual consumer Web use." He also pushed Microsoft and Google to "match or beat the commitments announced by Yahoo."

Few years back Yahoo, Google and Microsoft contemplated that it essential to retain users' data indefinitely. However, there was much hullabaloo on the subject by the consumers as well as by the privacy advocates and regulators.

This impelled the companies to guard the consumer data by jumbling cookies or Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. The other option with them was to delete the entire data after a specific period of time.

In all probability Microsoft and Google would be cursing Yahoo behind closed doors for reducing the bar to three months. On the other hand, 45 percent of the consumers who had voted for banning online tracking altogether in a survey conducted by the George Milne of the University of Massachusetts in 2007 would give Thumbs Up to Yahoo.