'Google, Microsoft, Yahoo breach privacy laws'

BERLIN, GERMANY: Observing that Google, Microsoft and Yahoo had violated rules by keeping data on individual computer users for too long, European Union officials said the search majors must limit the amount of time they keep Internet-search records to six months or justify the need for any longer storage periods.

A group of 27 European national privacy chiefs also said it will also ask the US Federal Trade Commission to investigate if the data retention practices of the three companies violated American law.

In a letter sent on Wednesday, the advisory panel to the European Commission asked the three companies to appoint outside auditors to verify that their practices of rendering individual data anonymous truly eliminated all links to individuals, The New York Times reported.

Under European Union data protection rules, search engines are required to sever all traceable links to individual computer users completely and irrevocably after six months.

Since 2008, European data protection officials have been urging search companies to retain highly detailed search records for no longer than six months. Google, Yahoo and Microsoft all agreed to modify how long they store the detailed data, which varied up to 18 months. However, the regulators are not yet satisfied with it.

Meanwhile, Microsoft said it would comply with the commission’s request to render data from individuals anonymous after six months, but it still plans to retain software cookies and other session identifiers for 18 months.

Google still keeps the data for nine months, while Yahoo has said it will remove part of a computer’s unique identification number, the IP address, after 90 days but reserved the right to recreate individual logs at the request of law enforcement authorities.

Meanwhile, Google balked at the requests from regulators in Germany and Hong Kong to surrender fragments of Internet data and e-mails it had improperly collected from unsecured home wireless networks, saying it needed time to resolve legal issues.

In a statement, Google implied that German privacy laws were preventing it from turning over the information, even to a government agency.

“As granting access to payload data creates legal challenges in Germany which we need to review, we are continuing to discuss the appropriate legal and logistical process for making the data available,” a media report quoted Peter Barron, a Google spokesman as saying in London.