Microsoft has announced that it would reduce the users data retention time on its Bing search engine from 18 months to 6 months.
With the new policy in place, the IP address of the users will be deleted completely after 6 months, thereby offering increased user privacy protection. However, all other processes will remain the same, for the reason that data collected from users is required by Microsoft to enhance its search results.
The following chart explains the new Microsoft approach:
The change is essentially aimed at gratifying the Article 29 Working Party, the group of 27 European national data protection regulators charged with providing advice to the European Commission and other EU institutions on data protection, which has been criticizing the search engines for retaining user data for advertising purposes.
Microsoft says there are many good reasons to retain and review search data for improving the quality of the results, protect against fraud and maintain a secure and viable business, but they will implement the changes within the next 12-18 months.
[Via RDMag.com]
One Comment
I use both Bing and Google search engine and i dont see much difference in their search results. I use google for searching hard to find academic topics and Bing for general search.