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In an attempt to set a new standard for the industry, Yahoo has initiated 90-day user data retention policy.

According to the company, this stance “strengthens Yahoo!’s relationship of trust with its 500 million users world-wide and enhances its longtime leadership on privacy.”

The big players in the search world, a la Yahoo and Google, will usually keep user log data for 18 months.  This has long been a sticking point for companies concerned with how search firms could take advantage of such data.

In fact, Google themselves accidentally gave up personal information about an Orkut user to Indian authorities earlier this year. The user was sent to prison having been accused of posting obscene comments about a politician online.

Yahoo’s new policy will keep log data anonymous for 90 days, “with limited exceptions for fraud, security and legal obligations.”

The policy will apply to pageviews, ad clicks and search.

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