Digital Prank

Most of us unaware of the fact that most of the search engines hold the user search data for a considerable amount of time. Every search engine has got their own data retention policies to hold the user search data. Search Engines generally hold some important information like IP (Internet Protocol) address, search keywords and information from cookies exchanged. Some claimed and accused search engines for retention of such information which is very sensitive and must be erased off in a short period of time. Long back popular search engines like Google, Microsoft, Yahoo maintained user data logs indefinitely.

Some time back in September Google said it will let data go off in 9 months from 18 months unless legally required to retain the data for longer. Microsoft now says it is gonna cut down the data retention period to 6 months from 18 months if other search engine giants agreed to do so. This decision was the outcome of pressure from European Union to search engines to cut off the period of data retention policies. In 2007 European Union pressurized Google for similar reasons. Once AOL was sued by FTC(Federal Trade Commission) for releasing users search data.