Yahoo cuts data retention to three months

Search engine Yahoo! Inc will cut to three months the time it stores personal data gathered from Web surfing, making its retention policy the shortest among peers, the company said on Wednesday. The company will "anonymize" the computer addresses of its users within three months in most cases, from a prior standard of 13 months. It is reserving the right to keep data for up to six months if fraud or system security are involved. "Google first went to 18 months and started this competition," said Ari Schwartz, vice president at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a privacy advocacy group. Yahoo's pledge is "significant because they are getting rid of some data after 90 days and they actually have an implementation plan to get this done," he added.