Microsoft Twiddles Fingers on Privacy, but looks good doing it

Microsoft curtails how long it stores Web searches


Microsoft Corp. said on Sunday the software maker was taking new steps to protect consumer privacy in the areas of Web search and online advertising and called on the Internet industry to support it.

... several paragraphs of meaningless blather ...

Specifically, Microsoft said it would make all Web search query data anonymous after 18 months on its "Live Search" service, unless it receives user consent to store it longer. The policy changes are retroactive and worldwide, it said.



So the cops can supena the records for a year and a half and retroactively watch every site you visit with your msn browser. Cool.


Microsoft plans to store customer search data separately from data tied to people, e-mail addresses or phone numbers and take steps to assure no unauthorized correlation of these types of data can be made. It also will permanently remove "cookie" user identification data, Web address? or other identifiers.



"unauthorized correlation" ha ha ...it's the cops people are worried about. And they are "authorized" to correlate that data. So that promise means diddly squat.


"Microsoft is going to do a more thorough scrub of customer data once it is too old," said Peter Swire, a law professor at Ohio State University who served as U.S. privacy czar in the 1990s. "Previously, the practice was to do a partial scrub."


What is this , a sales meeting ? whats the difference between " a more thorough scrub" and a "partial scrub" ? You delete one little field and get to say you did something ? Certainly you're not promising to actually erase the data , I can see that.

So. if you use the MSN browser, your email addy , your phone number , and your searches all wind up in one big basket for any cop (an authorized user) with a supenea and a superviser breathing down his neck to "solve the case .. do anything you have to! You're on permanent overtime until the case is solved, you don't get to go home ..." and bingo... bozo the clown here made too many searches on some particular gun he was thinking of buying , that gun was used in a recent murder, lets go pick up bozo and lean on him for a while until he confesses. Oops , Bozo doesn't actually have such a gun ? Well we have the murder weapon here we'll just make him say that he left it at the scene ...