Google Anonymization News

Some of my friends become extremely paranoid when going online. The funny part is they are not shopping online, and they're not having any vital and very secret data to move all over the Internet. They are just occasional Internet surfers, using it at home for one or two hours per week, just to read and send some emails, visit a few Web pages(using Internet Explorer 6!!!), maybe burn one or two DVDs they recorded recently with the video camera in a trip or at a wedding.

Despite all these, they still ask me on a regular basis about how are they tracked by sites visited, about the security of their YM conversations, or about some harmless "Cookie threat" reported by their antivirus. I guess I should tell them about the Google anonymization news I just heard...but there's only one problem - they are probably sleeping now, or taking a walk, so I'll tell you!

Due to regulatory pressure, Google decided to change its data retention policy, now reducing the period before anonymizing IP addresses. According to them, IP adresses are now made anonymus after 9 months, instead of 18 months, as it was the deal so far. So...how is this affecting the end user sitting in front of the computer in his living room, after all?

Basically, we're talking about increased security of your personal data, but I wouldn't go that far in claiming that your search tasks will become anonymous, because they won't. "Google's search business is offered to the public for free, and is thus inherently superior from a privacy perspective to paid services because it does not require users' real names, billing addresses, credit card numbers or mandatory tax and accounting records. To support this free service, Google primarily relies on being able to serve relevant advertising to its users," wrote Google in a letter to the Article 29 working group.

At last, Google said they are still working on the anonymization algorithm to use, since this is more about making IP addresses "disappear," rather than having to erase additional details.

"We have focused on IP addresses, because we recognize that users cannot control IP addresses in logs. On the other hand, users can control their cookies. When a user clears cookies, s/he will effectively break any link between the cleared cookie and our raw IP logs once those logs hit the 9-month anonymization point. Moreover, we are continuing to focus on ways to help users exert better controls over their cookies."

As long as everything works fine for me as a Google user, I couldn't care less about who's messing with my searches. After all, I don't have anything to hide, and I am sure Google doesn't need to check what I am doing. The problems may appear if third parties get information from Google, but I didn't hear about such a thing, so far.