Yahoo’s new privacy polices raise questions about what sort of data do the web service companies collect about their users’ identity and activity and for how long. Regulators in both Europe and North America are also investigating the way that these companies use this information.
 

It looks that not only Yahoo took measures regarding personal information storage. Both Google and Microsoft, which held user data for 18 months, announced that they will shorten this period. Google will erase or mask personal user information, like the IP address and cookies after 9 months. Microsoft plans to do the same with their user data after 6 months and set this interval as an industry standard.
 

Yahoo stated that, along with erasing cookies and search engine logs, they will also discard information about page clicks, page view, ad clicks and ad views. This type of information is often used to customize the content of advertisements the user is shown on a webpage. The company will introduce the new privacy policy in January 2009 and it is expected that all Yahoo’s services will be provided with it by mid-2010.
 

These privacy policies were revised by the big web companies as a consequence of the discussions with European Union regulators, which insisted that the data about user activity and information should be stored for a shorter time.