Today we sent a letter to the Article 29 Working Party notifying them of our intention to make a change to Bing’s data retention policy.
Specifically, we are reducing the amount of time we store IP addresses from searchers to 6 months. Currently we keep that information for 18 months before we delete it. Generally, when Bing receives search data we do a few things: first, we take steps to separate your account information (such as email or phone number) from other information (what the query was, for example). Then, after 18 months we take the additional step of deleting the IP address and any other cross session IDs associated with the query. Under the new policy, we will continue to take all the steps we applied previously – but now we will remove the IP address completely at 6 months, instead of 18 months. We think this gives us the right balance between making search better for consumers (we use the data to improve the service we offer) and providing greater protection for the privacy of our users.
This is a strong step forward in our journey to protect the privacy of our customers while providing a great set of search tools. For additional details on this check out the blog post at Microsoft on the Issues.
Reese Solberg – Bing Privacy Manager
This is a good step. Keeping such data for a long time worries a lot of users.
This post was mentioned on Twitter by Vaidhyanathan: Updates to Bing Privacy http://bit.ly/7uSI8p
Hi. Whilst I appreciate the safety features you have introduced and the fast search groupings you have developed, I feel that you have restricted the delivery of content and links rather too much.This I suspect is because the www is a very big network, full of stuff that does not necessarily fit into categories, everyone seems to want to be different,which is good, there are lotsof different protocols and formats, operating systems and languages, so it would be a tall order to ask you to make all these safe as well as accessible ,I know, however the upshot of trying to may become an excercise in a form of mild censorship..someone decides what to include and what to exclude.It is already apparent!Sadly, I find myself drifting back to google, simply because if I am searching then I want to 'see' everything and make my own decisions.Of course I know (usually!) the difference between a line of Java or a bit of code that is obviously dangerous,posted as a link, it does help to have a program covering my back in case i make a mistake, in case my firewall lets me down, but still, If the WWW is going to develope in a kind of evolutionary way, then mistakes are going to be part of that.Simply restricting access to half the content, because a teenager thinks that bit was oldfashioned or uninteresting, or because the protocol is not a popular one, or because governments use this or that format, is in my oppinion not useful and could damage the open and free concepts of the WEB.
No matter what, someone will find a way around it anyway, so please, consider a possibility of a 'Bing' that can crash through ALL the configurations of people's ideas of what a website or link is.Just because something is popular is not a reason to make only that available!
We need choice, or the gogle box wins!
Microsoft is making some updates to Bing privacy. The company sent a letter to the Article 29 Working
thank you for being clear and open, I, like many people, never bother to read the small print, which is where you'll normally find this information.
Microsoft is making some updates to Bing privacy. The company sent a letter to the Article 29 Working Party , notifying them of its intention to make a change To the...
Microsoft is making some updates to Bing privacy. The company sent a letter to the Article 29 Working Party , notifying them of its intention to make a Change to the...
Under pressure from European regulators, Microsoft’s Bing is finally cutting the amount of time
Microsoft's Bing blog announced they will reduce the time frame they store search data, from 18 months to only 6 months. This is in response to the European Union's request that search companies reduce the time they store such data....
Thank you for good information
It is good to see that Bing is taking steps to lead the search community and be transparent.