IP Addresses As Personal Information

From ABC News: Peter Scharr, Germany’s data protection commissioner, said that when someone is identified by an IP Address then it should be regarded as personal information. Google disagrees with this argument and insists that an IP address merely identifies the location of the computer and a user does not always use the same computer and IP address.

Treating IP addresses as personal information would affect how search engines record data. Google, for example, already cut the time it stored information to 18 months and reduced expiration of cookies from 30 years to 2 years.

Google argues that the reason they collect IP addresses is to give customers a more accurate service by identifying what part of the world a search result comes from and what language they use, which is not enough to identify an individual user.

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