Here’s some good Yahoo-related news: The company is going to start anonymizing the data it retains relating to stuff its users do on Yahoo sites a lot more quickly. At the moment, it saves data that could be associated with an individual for thirteen months before nuking it, but it’ll be slashing that to 90 days for most data, making exceptions for fraud, security, and legal obligations. The 90-day policy covers not just data relating to searches, but also the pages and ads you view and click on.

Google’s data-anonymizing process begins after nine months, so Yahoo’s move is aggressive. Let’s hope it becomes a standard for the industry–or that Google, Microsoft, and other competitors feel the urge to go even further. Sixty days, anyone? Do I hear a month?

Here’s Yahoo’s official blog post on the news.

 
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