An EU data privacy panel said late last week that it will now scrutinize the common practice of retaining identifying personal user data gleaned from search engines, sometimes for as much as two years, that is now followed by most internet search engine providers including Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft.
The panel said in a statement last week that: it will deal with search engines in general and scrutinize their activities from a data-protection point of view, because this issue affects an ever-growing number of users.
Internet search firms claim that they only collect user data to deliver more accurate search results and better targeted marketing. The EU doesn’t buy that story, and counters that this information is vulnerable to security breaches from online hackers or used by governments.
Google was recently rated by UK-based Privacy International as the worst destinations to visit on the internet in terms of personal data privacy. The internet watchdog is not happy with Google’s ability to link search engine data with other user identifying data from email, instant messaging, and map services.
A 28-strong EU panel of national data protection officers started to investigate Google’s data privacy practices in May this year. Google only recently cut the time it stored personal user search data from 24 months to 18 months and said it was doing everything to protect it according to EU data privacy regulations. But the EU doesn’t seem convinced that’s enough, and said it remains involved in a constructive dialog with Mountain View, California-based Google.
