“When we began anonymizing after 18 months, we knew it meant sacrifices in future innovations in all of these areas.” – Official Google Blog
Now Google has had to start anonymising search engine data (i.e. our IP addresses) after 9 months. The Article 29 Working Party, an EU privacy regulators’ group, is still not happy, however and has called for data to be deleted after six months.
The Data Protection Act states that personal data should not be kept longer than is necessary. Addendum: According to Out-Law, there is some debate about whether IP addresses *are* personal data, but it seems like in the hands of internet service providers, they are, because ISPs have our names and addresses as well.
I am not sure why Google would need a specific IP address for search data for as long as 9 months. Why can’t they just generalise the information to look at what country the user comes from? That certainly isn’t inflammatory data. Although there seems to be a general trend towards having less privacy, I am not wrapping my head in tin foil just yet. Where is the Firefox Add-on to scramble our IP addresses, just to toy with confuse them?
(the) health informaticist 