The Article 29 Working Group, a collection of the EU's top minds on data protection and privacy issues, has issued a major report (PDF) of its findings, and it won't be good news to the search engine community. The EU started with the premise of a "right to a private life" and allowed only limited data collection exceptions to that right. Search engines can only hang on to European user data for six months, must generally treat IP addresses as "personal information," and must comply with the rules even if they are based outside the EU.
The retention period will…
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