AFP

Los Angeles, Mar 15: Google said on Wednesday it would begin routinely purging its data banks of information that identifies search engine users in order to better shield their anonymity.

Google will delete information from 'cookies,' bits of software put on computers to track website visits, as well as erase portions of the IP addresses that identify which computer a person is using to get online.

The past practice of the Mountain View, California, Internet search colossus was to keep all logged Web searching details indefinitely.

"We're pleased to report a change in our privacy policy," Google lawyers Peter Fleischer and Nicole Wong said in a posting on Wednesday at the company's website.

"Unless we're legally required to retain log data for longer, we will anonymize our server logs after a limited period of time."

Data kept by Google regarding searches by users will be made 'much more anonymous' 18 to 24 months after it is collected, according to the attorneys.

"After talking with leading privacy stakeholders in Europe and the United States, we're pleased to be taking this important step toward protecting your privacy," Fleischer and Wong wrote.

"Our engineers are already busy working out the technical details."  Google hoped to implement the new privacy policy within a year.

"I think it is an important step in the right direction," said Internet rights attorney Kurt Opsahl of the Electronic Freedom Foundation."

"I hope it inspires a competition with other search engines to see which can provide the best privacy protection."

Google's announcement was a break from the common pattern of Internet search engines cloaking details about what how much they track user activity and what they do with the information.

The policy shift comes in the wake of a legal battle Google fought last year with US government officials that demanded revealing user data from the search engine, and from an America On Line (AOL) flub that exposed user behavior.

The court fight ended with Google ordered to turn over some data on sites in its popular search engine to the US federal government, but only 50,000, far fewer than the government wanted.

US District Judge James Ware rejected the Justice Department's attempt to obtain sensitive data that might disclose the online search habits of web users, noting that that could cause a 'loss of good will' among its users.

Federal prosecutors sought the information as ammunition in a legal quest to revive an overturned 1998 statute making it a crime for websites to allow minors access to adult material online such as pornography.

The Child Online Protection Act was deemed unconstitutionally broad when it was struck down in court about three years ago.

AOL admitted to a `goof-up' last year after it published raw search data a company website designed to help search-technology researchers.

A few hundred of the searches contained sensitive information such as credit card and Social Security numbers.

"The DOJ subpoena and the AOL release of revealing search logs highlighted for people how personal the collected information is and how important it is to keep it private," Opsahl said.

"Those two things over last year pushed this issue to a head."

Routinely stripping its search logs of potentially identifying information enables Google to better shield users if it is forced to hand over data by officials in any country.

"This is a technical protection, not a legal protection," Opsahl said.

"Even if they are compelled by a court to provide the information they would provide it anonymised."

Google's new policy to obscure IP addresses will leave enough of the number to limit the options to 256 computers.

"Having anonymity protected by the power of the crowd is good, but there is the question of deleting the IP addresses completely," Opsahl said.

Google said it uses the search data 'to improve the quality of our services and for other business purposes' including thwarting hackers and detecting online fraud.