WASHINGTON - YAHOO! Inc announced on Wednesday that it was slashing the amount of time it retains the personal data of Web users to 90 days from the previous 13 months.

'Under the new policy, Yahoo! will anonymise user log data within 90 days with limited exceptions for fraud, security and legal obligations,' Yahoo! said in a move it said 'sets an industry-leading approach to user data privacy'.

Yahoo! said the new policy will 'apply not only to search log data but also page views, page clicks, ad views and ad clicks'.

'This new policy strengthens Yahoo!'s relationship of trust with its 500 million users world-wide and enhances its longtime leadership on privacy,' the Sunnyvale, California, Internet company said in a statement.

Yahoo! and other Internet firms have been under pressure from US privacy groups and the European Union to cut the amount of time they keep search and other data associated with a user's unique Internet address.

Web search giant Google cut the period to nine months from 18 months in September while arch-rival Microsoft, the US software giant, said this month that it was ready to reduce the time to six months from the current 18 months if other Internet firms agreed to do so.

Ms Anne Toth, Yahoo!'s vice-president of policy and head of privacy, said the company's new 90-day retention policy 'sets a new benchmark for the industry'.

'Responsible use of data is critical to establishing and maintaining user trust,' she said. 'Our users expect relevant and compelling content and advertising when they visit Yahoo!, but they also want assurances that we are focused on protecting their privacy'.

'This policy represents Yahoo!'s assessment of the minimum amount of time we need to retain data in order to respond to the needs of our business while deepening our trusted relationship with users,' Ms Toth said.

An Internet user's personal search data is used in a variety of ways by firms such as Yahoo! and Google including the targeting of advertisements to the perceived interests of individual users.

Yahoo! said the new 90-day storage period will still allow advertisers to 'continue to leverage our innovative interest-based advertising systems to deliver the most relevant ads to those users'.

It said there would be 'specific and limited exceptions' to the 90-day rule 'in order to fight fraud and preserve system security.' In such cases, 'Yahoo! will retain system specific data in identifiable form for no more than 6 months,' it said.

Microsoft welcomed Yahoo!'s move on Wednesday but said what was more important than the time-frame was how search engines go about making a user's personal data anonymous.

'Microsoft believes all major players in the market should move to effective privacy practices and welcomes Yahoo!'s steps on search anonymisation following Microsoft's call for an industry standard last week,' said Mr Brendon Lynch, Microsoft's director of privacy strategy.

'Microsoft believes that the method of anonymisation is more important than the anonymisation timeframe and believes all major search engines need to adopt a high standard,' he added in a statement. -- AFP