The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

Feeds

Microsoft finally cuts Bing data retention time to six months

Microsoft has finally slashed the amount of time it keeps some online search query data to just six months, over a year after it declared it would make the change if the likes of Google and Yahoo! agreed to play ball. The company’s privacy chief Peter Cullen said late yesterday that Microsoft planned to implement the changes to …

This topic is closed for new posts.
wgae
Thumb Up

Microsoft finally steps up to fight Google

“We will delete the entire Internet Protocol address associated with search queries at six months rather than at 18 months.”

They are talking about the ENTIRE IP-Address being removed. This is far far better than what Google does. IIRC, Google just "anonymizes" the last Byte of the IP address, making your computer one of a pool of 256 computers.

Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward
Reply Icon

Google?

The best solution to Google's privacy abuses it to steer clear of Google. If you can't manage that for some reason then change your IP address regularly (mine changes at least daily anyway) and delete those pesky Google cookies every session.

Anonymous Coward
Flame

"Microsoft continues to examine our practices"

I thought they were deleting personal data not continuing to examine it? lol

If they're so good at "examining" their own practices then why is their software abysmal? Perhaps Word only has to be good enough to write a requirements spec for Excel...

adnim

I had forgotten

that Bing existed.

And just as I expected when I made a decision to never use Bing, it has not been to the detriment of my Internet experience.

Scroogle-ssl and no cookies.

This post has been deleted by its author

This post has been deleted by its author

James Butler
FAIL

Verbal Sewage

So now the only data Bing will retain (indefinitely) is everything *but* the irrelevant IP address?

Must be sweet to be able to fool most of the people all of the time. It's quite simple: 6 months is how long it takes Microsoft to mine the data and assign variables like "geo_location" and "service_provider" to each record they keep, making the ridiculously useless IP address data completely irrelevant. Why clutter up your records with useless data when you've reassigned the info?

So if Google made this same promise, will The Register cut them some slack? Not bloody likely. You've reserved a special place in hell for Google, and even this nonsense from Microsoft, the single most obtrusive, data-hungry corporation on the planet, cannot save Google from your bad graces.

David Halko
IT Angle

With billions of people, this is all about money...

With billions of people, the reduction of historical data means a serious reduction in cost.

Cut your data retention period, smaller long term storage is required, smaller database engines are required, less power is required for the long term storage, movement to SSD storage (cutting down in Electricity and HVAC costs) becomes more feasible.

Less data retention means less accurate ads for consumers & marketing - meaning people become more annoyed with useless adds and marketing gets lower takes on their advertising click-throughs.

This discussion of anonymity is more about finding a positive spin for the user & advertising communities.

Robert E A Harvey
Unhappy

so

What search engine do the paraniodista recommend?

This topic is closed for new posts.