Yahoo! Ups Data Retention Period to 1.5 Years
Yahoo! has announced that it is extending the period for retention of user data from 90 days to 18 months.
On Wednesday, Anne Toth, Chief Trust Officer at Yahoo!, announced that the company would be extending the period of data retention in order to provide customers with a more “robust, individualized experience.”
Toth writes that though Yahoo! worked to reduce its log file retention period to 90-days (with exceptions seeing some data kept for up to six months) just three years ago, it would be reversing that decision in the coming months. The 2008 change made Yahoo!’s retention period shorter than Google and Microsoft’s data retention periods by six and 15 months respectively. However, it seems Yahoo! has changed its tune. For while the company says it remains committed to retaining data “as long as we need to and [meeting] our consumers’ expectations on trust,” it now says changes in the last three years mean changes to the retention policy must be made.
“We have been reevaluating our log file data retention policy in light of these changes and as a result of this review we are moving to align our log file data retention policy closer to the competitive norm across the industry,” says Toth.
“That means that after this new policy goes into effect, we will no longer apply the 90-day retention policy to raw search logs or other log file data. We will hold raw search log files for 18 months and we will be closely examining what the right policy and time frame should be for other log file data.”
Yahoo! says it expects the new policy to go into effect in mid-to-late July, after it has notified users of the changes. Google announced in September 2008 that it would cut its own 18-month data retention period down to just nine months. For its part, Microsoft last year cut its own data retention period from 18 months to six in January of last year.
- Asus EeePad Transformer Arriving April 26 @ $399
- Mozilla Drops Spread Firefox Campaign
- Airless Wheel Concept Reduces Fuel Consumption
- Meet WheeMe the Massaging Robot
- Acer Now Shipping Iconia Tab W500 In NA
- Volkswagen Reveals 21st Century Beetle
- Verizon Activates 2.2M iPhones In First Quarter
- Bungie Re-Opening Registrations for Beta Testing
- Microsoft, Nokia Close Deal for Future Love Child
- Man Charged in Webcam Murder
- Robot Throws Opening Pitch at MLB Game
- Admit It: You Really Want To be Controlled
- Cardboard Lamp Ships In Its Own Shade
- AT&T Confesses: It Can't Handle iPhone, iPad
- U.S. Military Chose Android for Tactical Ops
- Sony's PSP Go Isn't Gone After All... in the U.S.
- Rumor: Wii 2's CPU, Price and Name Revealed
- Sony: PSN Outage Could Go On Through Saturday
- Apple to Beat Google to Cloud Music Service
soooo... bad for the privacy paranoids, good for those who enjoy getting search results that match their search habits.. and ultimately beneficial to advertisers and in turn for yahoo revenue from advertising? or have did i completely misunderstand what this data retention is for?
yay???
LOL, this is for Yahoo search? Has anyone used that in the last decade?
Enjoy your more targeted ads based on your email contents.
They want to sell more, I want to be served adds tailored to my tastes. Win-Win.
They want to sell more, they want to track me, I use private browsing or sandboxing, different login names, they track my IP and try to serve me the adds tailored to me and my hidden browsing habits, even when I am not in the mood or when I am not alone. Win-Lose, they win, I loose.
IPv4 depleted, IPv6 is out, every device with proper IP, not NAT-able by design. They cross reference my browsing and buying habits and times and usernames and finally decide I am not worth being served adds, at all, but also no content at all. I show interest in thermonuclear weapons suddenly. Lose-Lose *evil laughter*
Thought this was something to do with how long they store emails on their online service. After I lost all my emails on a yahoo account, I'll never go back to using yahoo for emails. Granted, I did not log in for a few months, but I was busy so there.
At least gmail doesn't delete your emails if you don't login for several months or even several years (one would hope)
"extending the period of data retention in order to provide customers with a more “robust, individualized experience.”
Yeah right, Hows about just telling the truth, men in black hats paid you a visit and told you to keep it longer in case they want to look someone up they are investigating. Seig Heil.
soooo... bad for the privacy paranoids, good for those who enjoy getting search results that match their search habits.. and ultimately beneficial to advertisers and in turn for yahoo revenue from advertising?
LoL, what? Do you really browse the Internet for the sole purpose of the advertising? Personally, I don't even see 95%+ of the ads on the internet (Opera user script), and I don't click on any of the ones that do make it through. Maybe that makes me a jerk, but I never do anything because I like the ads. If I watch the superbowl, its for the football, not the ads. As for search, I don't need personalized search, I don't think I've ever searched the same thing twice (unless I forgot to bookmark an important link). I'm not sure what personal data Yahoo! or any provider could be collecting that would be of any benefit to me personally. As for things like location, when I want a restaurant, I search "Chinese Food in AnyCity, USA", I don't need Google knowing my exact GPS location just to find a damn restaurant (although they get it anyway if I use Google Maps on my phone). From now on, I'm going to plug addresses manually into my old GPS from search results, no more spying on me. And the phone goes into airplane mode unless I'm making a call, no more tracking my movements via cell tower.
Too many people these days ask "why not" when it comes to some corporation spying on them and invading their privacy. What ever happened to asking "why" first?
This is stupid. Retention should be outlawed...
If anyone is concerned about the search engines recording their search history then they should use Startpage which does not record any data about the user.
I love how these corporate "officers" claim that the data retention is in the "interest" of the users (consumers) LOL although considering how dull most people are today I figure they will actually swallow that line of BS hook, line, and sinker.
this country keeps data to long no such thing as privacy anymore like being on big brother record record record just stupid delete the dam serach you dont need it what use is it anyway really i dont click on darn adverts half of umm are likely to be scam enter my address go away with you