Website privacy

[Gucci]

How long do websites store information about you? If you access sites with passwords, date of birth etc, I imagine a lot of sites will end up with a lot of information held about you...even though you may not shop/bank etc with them. So how long does this 'digital footprint' last?

 

[shilzo]

normally about 6 years providing that they are complying with the DPA (Data Protection Act)

 

[league67]

and if they are not 'proper' they can just keep it in dbase for as long as they like. There are no 'expiration dates' as such.
hth

 

[Sp!ke]

Actually I dont think its so simple.

From a purely IT perspective rather than legal, my experience is that the data is generally stored for as long as there is space to store it - or until the data is lost due to an outage or failure of some kind.

I guess it really depends on the kind of data you're talking about, lots of data is kept indefinately and there are no rules to say it cant be kept either.

 

[toby1]

And you'll find a lot of information ends up stateside...not much you can do about it.

 

[Gucci]

...and there are people worrying about I.D cards. Sounds like they know your shoe size anyway. I heard that information logs such as web hits, email account names etc are now sold to firms too