Search engines may get a blow from EU, if they continue the storage of user information on their website.

This finding from the EU lists out that search engines had kept a tab on data and also stored it in database for a few months, which actually should be deleted after a period of six months under European law.

According to the reports, Microsoft’s Bing search engine had hands on the data for close to six months and stored the IDs in the form of cookies for 18 months.

Google kept a track of user data in its search engine for a period of nine months. In case of Yahoo, it anonymises user’s information for 90 days after which it removes the last two digits from the user's IP address.

A letter of caution has been sent to Microsoft, Google and Yahoo, to which the chairman of the EU's Working Party 29 (WP29) Data Protection Commission Jacob Kohnstamm, stated:  “On behalf of the data protection authorities in the EU united in WP29, I call on you to improve the protection of the online privacy of users of your search engine services.”