Search engine companies Yahoo! and Microsoft are reportedly about to announce some concessions to their privacy policies after rivals including Google were lambasted for the length of time they retained personal data.Last month, human rights action group Privacy International placed Google last in its evaluation of internet service companies in terms of consumer data protection and accused the search engine giant of being "hostile to privacy".
Google has since agreed to keep search data for no longer than 18 months. It has also agreed to shorten the life of "cookies" - which identify and keep records of the programmes and applications it attaches to individuals' computers - from 30 years to two, reports the Financial Times.
To avoid a similar media furore, Yahoo! and Microsoft have come under pressure, particularly from the Working Party, to reveal their policies for retaining personal data - yet so far they have both kept quiet on the matter.
Both have confirmed that currently personal data is kept for "as long as is commercially useful", leaving some users open to the chance that their data will be stored indefinitely.
Instead, both companies have pledged to review their systems and will announce their new criteria in the coming weeks.
"We are talking to customers, to the industry and government officials about this and intend to provide an update in the near future which will more directly give the time frame," Brendon Lynch, privacy expert at Microsoft, told the Financial Times.
