Briefs

Wired Blog, By David Kravets, December 18, 2008

On Wednesday, Yahoo was hailed as a privacy leader among the major search engines: It said it would retain individual user data for only three months, down from 13 months. Google keeps individualized search data of its users for nine months and Microsoft for 18 months.

Privacy groups point out that the change is a good thing if Yahoo lives up to its word. Perhaps only three months' worth of one's search queries and web clicks could be exposed under a data breach, or handed over to the authorities with a warrant.

But Yahoo isn't giving up anything under the plan: Individual internet web surfers' browsing habits will continue to be analyzed under a microscope in order to target web users with ads for products they are likely to purchase.

A recent Yahoo paper, "Squeeze Every Drop of Meaning from Data," reveals a lot about its data mining. "We build models to describe behaviour most likely to lead to an ad response (ppt)," the company says in a British presentation.

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