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A European advisory body has recommended that internet search engines should delete users’ personal data.

The European Commission’s Article 29 Data Protection Working Party report has told how search engines are unclear on their data protection policies and advised that all collected personal data should be deleted after six months, the BBC has reported.

The recommendation would mean that collected data could only be used for the purpose of searching.

If the commission accepts the request it could lead to conflict with popular American search engine companies.

Google and Yahoo! carry a policy of rendering all users’ data anonymous after a period of 18 months. MSN’s policy comes into action at 13 months.

In a statement Peter Fleischer of Google’s global privacy counsel said: ‘Google takes privacy incredibly seriously; protecting our users’ privacy is at the heart of all our products.’

Another obligation set out in the report was the obtainment of personal consent from users to allow their data to be uses in non-search services. It also asked search engines to give users clear information on the data they intended to collect.

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The government has been criticised yet again after more than 100 websites were found to be selling the personal details of UK bank customers.

An investigation by The Times claimed that it could download the information for 32 UK customers, with one vendor allegedly willing to sell 30,000 British credit card numbers for just £1 each.

In response, the Information Commissioner has said an investigation will be launched into what was described as active accounts, according to a spokesman for the commissioner.

One analyst believes that the government must work now to enforce tougher security regulations that would prevent such incidents.

“We strongly believe that the government should introduce more stringent data breach laws and prosecute any organisation which takes such a laissez faire approach to protecting customer data,” stated Brian Spector, general manager at information security company Workshare.

Meanwhile the spokesman for the commissioner stated that the investigation would initially look at what security breach, if any, had taken place.

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