Google privacy policy 'is vague'
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Elements of Google's privacy policy are "vague", the firm's global privacy counsel tells BBC News.
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Privacy in the hereafter Hoping to appease privacy advocates who've come down hard on its data retention policies, Google has made a practically meaningless change to its cookie policy.â¦
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Privacy International wants Google to acknowledge and apologize for 'hostility' to customer privacy.
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The apparent release of searches made by hundreds of thousands of users is raising privacy concerns.
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Google's calls for a global privacy standard are not enough to allay concerns about its purchase of DoubleClick.
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The real privacy issues are being raised by Google, Yahoo, AOL and others, which are tracking users in order to show them advertising targeted to their interests.
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(InfoWorld) - European data protection officials are expanding their examination of the impact search engines have on privacy, afterÂ initially targeting Google Inc. last month, European Data Protection Supervisor Peter Hustinx said in an interview late Wednesday. A panel of European data protection officials called the Article 29 Working Group decided Wednesday to request information from Google's rivals amid concerns that search engines are holding onto information about the people who use them for too long, Hustinx said. Hustinx, a senior member of the working group, declined to name the companies. However, they are believed to include Yahoo Inc., Lycos Inc. and Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Live.com. The working group will make a general assessment of the state of European citizens' privacy in relation to search engines at its meeting in October or December, he said. "We will issue a generic paper from which national data protection authorities can address players in their jurisdictions," Hustinx said Google does present specific problems, he added, because so many of its services pose a possible threat to privacy. He mentioned Google Earth and Gmail, Google's Web-based e-mail service. Compiling information about people from the various different Web services could compound the threat to privacy, he said. Google has already replied to the letter it received from the working group last month. "The use of the Internet the way Google is doing it could introduce tremendous privacy problems. We will study the company's response to our letter very carefully," Hustinx said. "If the picture they give is not accurate or not justified we might find ourselves on a collision course," he said, but he added, "That's not my sense at the moment." In Google's response , the company offered to shorten the time it keeps Web searches to 18 months from two years. The company also promised to look at shortening the lifespan of cookies it deposits on computers. Google presently stores cookies, including ones that remember what language a person speaks, for 30 years. Google's cooperation impressed Hustinx until now. "I welcome a big company that is investing in privacy. This isn't just window dressing," he said, echoing comments he made at a data protection conference last month in Amsterdam. Broadening its examination beyond Google is an obvious next step, according to Danny Sullivan, who writes for searchengineland.com. He compared the cookie policies of Google, Windows Live and Yahoo and found that Yahoo stores the data for as long as Google while Windows Live stores the information for 14 years. However, Windows Live deposited far more cookies on computers than Google and Yahoo. Using a clean version of Windows Internet Explorer 7, Sullivan set it to reveal all cookies. Windows Live left 14 cookies as soon as he did a search; Yahoo left six, while Google left just two. "Both Google and Yahoo have 30-year cookies. So where's the letter for Yahoo from the Working Group? And isn't 14 years from Microsoft excessive?" Sullivan wrote. Yahoo and Microsoft both say they take privacy very seriously. "Microsoft has a long-term commitment to providing customers with control over the collection, use and disclosure of their personal information. While we have not received formal communication from the Article 29 Working Party, we recognize that online search is creating legitimate concerns about privacy and are actively engaged with data protection authorities around the world to ensure that our practices meet the highest standards when it comes to protecting privacy," Microsoft said in a statement. "Our users' trust is one of Yahoo's most valuable assets. That's why maintaining that trust and protecting our users' privacy is paramount to us. Our data retention practices vary according to the diverse nature of our services," Yahoo said. Â
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Google Inc.'s privacy practices are the worst among the Internet's top destinations, according to a watchdog group. The group is seeking to intensify the recent focus on how the online search leader handles personal information about its users.
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Bottom for privacy, but top for smearing Privacy International's (PI) research into privacy practises at internet service companies put Google in last place.â¦
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The portal's lapse tells a lot about the state of Web search privacy
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Google is told that it may be breaking EU privacy laws by keeping search data for up to two years.
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Google's privacy and content policies for Google Applications give Google full rights to use your content however the company wants.  Are you nervous?
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By Kevin J. O'Brien and Thomas Crampton  In the latest example of a U.S. technology giant potentially being called on the carpet in Europe, Google has been warned that it may be violating European Union privacy laws by storing data on its users for up to two years.
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(InfoWorld) - Google Inc.'s plans to shorten the life-span of cookies installed on a user's computer, ostensibly to improve user privacy, is being dismissed by some as complete hype. Apart from making it appear that the company is taking steps to address growing privacy concerns related to its data storing habits, in reality, the move changes very little they said. "No users will experience any gains in privacy at all due to Google's change in policy," said Randy Abrams, director of technical education at ESET, a vendor of antivirus products based in San Diego. "It's not a bad idea. It's just a worthless one. (Google's announcement either) demonstrates a complete lack of understanding about the role cookies can play in privacy, or else utter contempt for the intellect of Google users." In a blog post on Monday, Google's global privacy counsel Peter Fleischer said that in the coming months the company will start issuing user cookies that will be set to auto-expire after two years. Currently the cookies set by Google on a user's computer are designed to expire in 2038 -- unless users set their browsers to delete them sooner, he said "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," Fleischer said. But the fact that Google's cookies will auto-renew every time a user visits a Google web site completely negates any affect the move might have had, Abrams said. Only users who do not return to Google for two years will have their cookies auto-expire after that period. In all other cases, cookies will auto-renew and reset their life-spans with each visit to a Google site. Consequently the move has no effect on Google's existing privacy posture, said Pete Lindstrom an analyst with the Burton Group in Midvale, Utah. "As far as I can tell, there's going to be no change to the effective level of their intrusiveness, which I don't think is too significant in the first place. Maybe they want to get a little bit of privacy press." Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Google's plans to shorten the life-span of its cookies come amid growing concerns, especially in the European Union (EU), about its data retention policies. In June, Privacy International, a global privacy advocacy group, placed Google at the bottom of a list of 23 internet companies for "comprehensive consumer surveillance and entrenched hostility to privacy." In June Google announced that it would anonymize its search server logs, including IP addresses and cookie ID numbers after 18 months. That move was in response to a letter sent in May by the EU's Article 29 Data Protection Working Party, which expressed concerns about the length of time Google stores information in its search server logs. The letter, addressed to Fleischer, noted that server logs contain information that could be linked to an identified or identifiable person and therefore come under the purview of European data protection laws. In the same letter, the EU group also expressed concern about the 30-year life span of the cookies that Google installs on user systems. The letter noted that the Google's cookie lifespan was "disproportionate" to its stated purpose of storing user preference information.
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Google has the most abysmal privacy policies and is leading a &quot;race to the bottom&quot; by the world&#39;s most renowned Internet firms, according to a British human rights advocacy group.
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(InfoWorld) - Google has decided to make the data it stores about end-users anonymous in its server logs after 18 months, according to a blog posted Monday by the company's global privacy counsel. Previously, Google had said it would make the data anonymous after 18 to 24 months. The decision comes in response to a letter the company received last month from a European Union data protection working group regarding Google's privacy policies. Separately, a report released last week by Privacy International ranked Google worse than any other Internet company in protecting the privacy of its users. In its letter, the Article 29 Working Party, an advisory panel of representatives from the E.U.'s national data protection authorities, asked Google to explain why it needed to keep user data for 18 to 24 months. The group said server logs contain information that can be linked to a particular person and that collecting such data must comply with the EU's data protection laws. The working group said keeping the information for 18 to 24 months does not meet those laws, and it asked Google to justify its reasons for keeping the information for that length of time. The group said it planned to discuss this issue at a meeting later this month. In a response, privacy counsel Peter Fleischer said: "The Internet is a global medium, and the principles at stake -- privacy, security, innovation, and legal obligations to retain data -- have an impact beyond Europe and outside of the realm of privacy." He added: "These principles sometimes conflict: While shorter retention periods are good for privacy, longer retention periods are needed for security, innovation, and compliance reasons." Fleischer said Google believed it had "struck a reasonable balance between these various factors" and that its policies were consistent with E.U. data protection laws. Fleischer said Google needed to retain server logs for a variety of reasons, including: to improve its search algorithms for the benefit of users; to defend its systems by fighting click fraud and spam; to comply with data retention legal obligations; and to "meet valid legal orders from law enforcement as they investigate and prosecute serious crimes like child exploitation." "After considering the Working Party's concerns, we are announcing a new policy: to anonymize our search server logs after 18 months, rather than the previously established period of 18 to 24 months," Fleischer said. "We believe that we can still address our legitimate interests in security, innovation, and anti-fraud efforts with this shorter period. However, we must point out that future data retention laws may obligate us to raise the retention period to 24 months." Fleisher said Google disagrees that it could meet "legitimate interests in security, innovation, and anti-fraud efforts with any retention period shorter than 18 months." In addition, Fleischer said Google was considering the working party's concerns about cookie expiration periods and said it was looking into ways to redesign cookies to improve privacy and would make an announcement on the issue in the coming months. "As we build new products and services, we look forward to continuing our discussion with the Article 29 Working Party and with privacy stakeholders around the world. Our common goal is to improve privacy protections for our users," Fleischer said. In his blog, search engine analyst Danny Sullivan, editor-in-chief of SearchEngineLand.com said, "It's nice to see Google make such a fast, responsive move, though it is reacting to something that felt more like a political show rather than a real effort to improve privacy protection." Sullivan also criticized the working group for singling out Google. "I find the letter fairly amazing from a group that supposedly is concerned about privacy, in how it fails to ask any substantial questions and suggests, frankly, technical ignorance," he said in his blog. "It simply feels motivated out of political posturing. Where are the letters for Microsoft and Yahoo?"ADVERTISEMENTIBM Information On Demand 2006Industrial Industry Leaders, please join us at IBM's premier information management global event, IBM Information On Demand 2006, October 15-20, Anaheim, CA. More IBM business and technical solutions content in one place than ever before! Select from  over 800 sessions. Register today!
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Google's new Google Desktop Search tool raises a number of search privacy issues. In this article, we'll look at some of the usual specters of search privacy plus some new things people should consider.