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"Recently, many iPhone and iPad users were incensed to learn that Siri \u2014 the personal digital assistant for iOS devices \u2014 has an eerily long memory. Unbeknownst to Apple customers, Siri sends all your queries directly to Apple's company\u2019s servers, where it is kept for two years before being deleted. \nAnd while the truth about Siri is making headlines, it's not really shocking. Data retention policies have been aggravating Internet and cellphone users for years now. These policies are determined by individual companies and aren\u2019t regulated by state or federal laws.\nShrinking your digital footprint requires a lot of diligence, but if you'd like to get started then it helps to know which companies are hoarding your data and how long they intend to hold onto it.\nSearch Engines\nIt should come as no surprise that search engines are the biggest culprits when it comes to keeping track of users' data. Companies such as Google and Yahoo have a vested interest in keeping as much information about you on file as they can. But how long does your preferred search engine remember your queries?\nPopular search engines all store your data in similar ways, but they do so for different amounts of time. All of them keep a log of your sessions on their servers. These logs include your search terms, IP address and other session data, such as date and time.\nAfter a certain period of time, the companies \"anonymize\" these logs to varying degrees, with some fully deleting factors that could be used to identify specific users, like their IP addresses, and some keeping that information indefinitely. Here's the breakdown:\nGoogle stores user logs for 18 months and anonymizes IP addresses after nine months, but it does not fully delete IP addresses. Yahoo stores user logs for 18 months, anonymizes IP addresses within six months and does not specify whether it fully deletes all IP addresses. Bing stores user logs for 18 months and anonymizes IP addresses after six months, at which time IP addresses are fully deleted from the server.\nWeb Browsers\nSo you can't ever really take back that embarrassing Google search, but you can erase all record of it from your own computer.\nAll of the most popular web browsers \u2014 Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Apple Safari \u2014 allow you to delete either all of your web history or just the bits and pieces you'd rather no one else know about. But some of these browsers are better for stealth web surfing than others.\nChrome automatically stores web history for at least four weeks and allows users to delete some or all history. It also offers \"incognito\" private browsing mode. Safari automatically stores web history for at least three months, allows users to delete some or all history and also offers private browsing mode.\nInternet Explorer lets the user choose how long history is stored, including an option never to store history. It also allows users to delete some or all history and offers \u201CinPrivate\u201D browsing mode.\nFirefox allows users choose how long history is stored and also includes an option never to store history. Users can delete some or all history. Firefox offers private browsing mode and an option to automatically clear history upon exiting browser.\nInternet Service Providers (ISPs)\nJust because you deleted your web browser history, that doesn\u2019t mean there's no record of where you've been on the Internet. In fact, your ISP is keeping track of everything you do on the Web. How it retains this information, however, varies from company to company.\nListed below are the data retention times of IP-address logs for popular ISPs as reported by TorrentFreak in June, 2012 and the American Civil Liberties Union in 2010:\n\nTime Warner Cable: up to six months\nComcast: 180 days\nVerizon: 18 months\nAT&amp;T: 72 hours\n\nCellphone Companies\nIt's not just your Internet activity that's being tucked away somewhere. Major cell service providers also keep track of your data. Everything from the numbers you dial to the words you use in a text message can be recorded by your cellphone company.\nIn 2010, the Department of Justice recorded by the Department of Justice in 2010:\n\nVerizon: retains records of call details, text message details and cell towers used by phone for one year; retains record of text message content for three to five days.\nT-Mobile: retains records of call details and text message details for two years on pre-paid phones and five years on post-paid phones; retains records on cell towers used by phone for one year or longer; does not retain text message content records.\nAT&amp;T: retains records of call details and text message details for five to seven years on post-paid phones; retains records on cell towers used by phone indefinitely as of July 2008; does not retain text message content records.\nSprint: retains records of call details, text message details and cell towers used by phone for 18 to 24 months, depending on the device used; does not retain text message content records.\n\nYour Mobile Device\nAs Wired reported last week, even your beloved smartphone and tablet are keeping tabs on you.\nSiri, Apple\u2019s version of a virtual assistant built right into your mobile device, has recently been caught spilling user secrets. According to an Apple representative, all data recorded by Siri is sent to the company\u2019s servers and is stored there for a period of two years.\nSEE ALSO: How to Erase Your Data From an Old Computer or Phone\n\nData from Siri users is assigned a random number, not an Apple ID or email address. And after six months, according to Apple, it \"disassociates\" this number from the data file in much the same way that search engine companies anonymize IP addresses after a given period of time.\nAnd much like anonymized search engine data, Siri files are used for product testing and improvement purposes long after they become disassociated from their users. \nMashable composite, image via iStockphoto, bpalmer"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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