EU Takes Search Engines to Task on Data Retention

The European Union’s Article 29 Working Party has sent letters to Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft telling them that they must cease retaining personal data of search engine users for more than six months and must improve their anonymization procedures. It also asked the companies to appoint outside auditors to review their procedures for anonymizing data to ensure that they truly prevent identification of the users behind the data. In addition, the Party sent copies of the letters to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and asked it to investigate whether the companies’ data retention practices were “unfair” or “deceptive” within the meaning of the FTC Act.