Europe: Your I.P. Address Is Personal - Via NYT > Technology:

At a hearing Monday, a top privacy regulator in Europe said something that needs to be said: I.P. addresses need to be treated as personal information.

I.P. or Internet Protocol addresses are sort of like phone numbers. They identify two different computers that are exchanging information over the Internet. The analogy is imperfect because Internet service providers often switch I.P. addresses around for home users. So knowing an I.P. address doesn’t guarantee you know what computer is at that address right now.

Nonetheless, Peter Scharr, Germany’s data protection commissioner, told a hearing of the European Parliament that I.P. addresses should generally be seen as personal information, according to a report by The Associated Press. Under some laws, and much industry practice, information that can identify an individual is often subjected to tougher standards for how it can be recorded, stored and transmitted than information about anonymous users and groups of users.

Mr. Scharr is the head of a group of European privacy regulators who are preparing a report on ow Internet search engines, including Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, comply with Europe’s privacy laws, which are generally much tougher than those in the United States. The issue also relates to Google’s proposed acquisition of DoubleClick, which is still being reviewed by European regulators.

Most search engines keep log files that record every search and include the I.P. address of the computer conducting the search. Google recently said it would start to erase some of the digits in the I.P. numbers held in its files after 18 months.

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