Yahoo Cuts How Long They Retain User Information

For years privacy advocates and the search engines have been waging a war between user's privacy rights and the search engines' right to run a profitable business. While the service that search engines provide is free to users, providing that service is far from free for the company that owns the search engine. All those free services are paid for through advertising. The more accurately target the audience that sees the ad the better the return on investment for the advertiser and the search engine. To that end search engines retain all types of information about the people who use their services. This information according to the search engines is anonymized, meaning that any personally identifying information is removed and your queries can't be tracked back to you personally. I personally have my reservations with that statement since digital information seems to persist even after you supposedly get rid of it. Also the major search providers also provide email services, which means that you might be logged in when you run a search (even if you didn't sign in manually).
While I must admit that collecting demographic information can add to the usefulness of a service as well as profitability to the search provider, many privacy advocates and groups are very concerned with the types of information collected, storage methods, privacy safeguards, and length of time that the information is kept. In answer to at least one of these concerns Yahoo has lessened the amount of time it holds onto user information to 3 months from 13. Currently Microsoft stores data for six months while the giant of search engines Google retains your information for 9 months. Since logic dictates that the longer your information is online the more opportunities criminals and unscrupulous organizations will have to pilfer your private data, let's hope the other search engines soon follow suit, in fact let's hope that they reduce retention time even more. The bottom line though is that aside from complaining to the companies that store your data the only data you really have control over is what is on your local machine and what information you willingly supply by using an online service. Until such time as search engine reduce the amount of time your information is retained your choices are limited to:

1. Keep your cache empty
2. Anonymize your browsing by using a proxy server
   
3. Don't log in to your email account during the same session as any searches that you wish to keep anonymous
4. Don't use the search engine owned by the same company as your email provider
5. Opt out of targetd advertising if available
   
6. Email your favorite search engine provider with your privacy concerns
7. Support one or more of the privacy watchdog groups that exist to protect your privacy
   

Unfortunately not using search engines is just not an option and in order for search engines to remain free they must continue to be funded through advertising. Our best weapons are awarenes and standing up to protect your privacy and freedom. Speak up and be heard!

BBC News - Yahoo throws down data gauntlet
Privacy International - http://pi.gn.apc.org/
Yahoo Privacy Policy - http://info.yahoo.com/privacy/us/yahoo/details.html
Google Privacy - http://www.google.com/privacy.html
MSN Privacy - http://privacy2.msn.com/en-my/fullnotice.aspx
Check out this interesting article at Google Watch - http://www.google-watch.org/bigbro.html