Lawmaker Praises Yahoo's Privacy Policy
Markey is the chairman of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet. On Thursday, Markey issued a statement lauding the move by Yahoo and calling on industry giants Microsoft and Google to make similar changes to the amount of time they hold onto sensitive information.
"Yahoo voluntarily sets a new standard for privacy protection, a standard against which Microsoft, Google and others will now be compared," Markey said in a statement. "Privacy is a cornerstone of freedom and I applaud Yahoo's announcement for recognizing that consumers deserve ample privacy protections in the digital era to ensure trust and freedom on the Internet," Markey said.
The announcement Markey is referring to, of course, is the move to only hold onto end-user information for three months. Earlier this month, Microsoft announced that it would anonymize user information after six months and said it was reluctant to shorten that time span unless other competitors did the same.
"I have been pressing online companies for greater voluntary efforts to refrain from the massive, systematic gathering of information about individual consumer Web use and the long-term retention of such data in a form that can identify the Web habits, interests, searches and purchases of individual Americans," Markey said. "I urge other leading online companies to match or beat the commitments announced by Yahoo."
Whether or not Google, Microsoft and other technology companies that rely on private information of its users will shorten the amount of time they hold onto information remains to be seen.
However, for privacy advocates who are concerned with how long their personal information will be retained by companies, Yahoo's lead has to be encouraging. And when paired with calls from Capitol Hill for reform, changes might start happening.