Search engines not sticking to EU rules

The EU is flexing its muscles when it comes to search engines and how they protect their data.

It seems that the three main search engines operators, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo are not complying with the current EU data rules.

According to the EU data protection group, the way that search engines make their users search data anonymous do not comply with the European Union’s Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC.

Google have been told to reduce the amount of time that they keep hold of data from nine months to six months, despite that fact that they have already reduced it from eighteen months.

The EU has sent out letters to the search engine operators, asking if they could bring in an outside auditor to advise and monitor the data retention situation.