Google Responds to Accusations of Privacy Issues

Last week the Privacy International released a study accusing Google of having the “worst privacy” out of all major sites. and before that the European Union released Article 29 Working Party addressing the same issues. The initial response from Google was a statement discounting the accuracy of the study and its findings.

A week later, however, it appears as if Google had made some moves this week to improve some of the issues that were addresses in the report:

* Lower data retention period – While initially storing all information for 24 months Google announced this week that it will lower its data retention period to 18 months. After 18 months the data will be anonymized.

* Consider reducing cookie expiration time – Google’s tracking cookies are currently set for an infinite period of time. No new period has been set (yet).