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BRUSSELS, Belgium European data privacy regulators confirmed Thursday that Internet search engines based outside Europe must also comply with EU rules on how a person’s Internet address or search history is stored.Rules that insist someone must consent to their data being collected and give a person the right to object or verify their information apply to search engines, the regulators’ group said in a short statement as they prepare a full report due by April.

And they apply to companies “who have their headquarters outside the EU, but only an establishment in one of the EU member states, or who use automated equipment based in one of the member states for the purposes of processing personal data.

“The group did not give details on how this would work, merely saying that Internet search engines such as Google Inc., Yahoo or MSN are important because they are now “a daily routine for an ever growing number of citizens.”"The protection of the users’ privacy and the guaranteeing of their rights, such as the right to access to their data and the right to information as provided for by the applicable data protection regulations, remain the core issues of the ongoing debate,” said the group of national regulators from each EU nation, known as the Article 29 Working Party.”Search engines fall under the EU data protection directive if there are controllers collecting users’ IP addresses or search history information, and therefore have to comply with relevant provisions,” it said.Google said the statement didn’t change its position and it was committed to working with privacy and consumer advocates as well as EU regulators to improve privacy online for all users.

“We look forward to seeing their report,” it said of the Article 29 group.Microsoft said companies should remove the IP address and other identifying information from the search queries to help make the stored data anonymous. Yahoo had no immediate comment.Germany’s data protection commissioner Peter Scharr, who has just stepped down as the head of the group, said last month that IP addresses, a string of numbers that identifies a computer, should generally be regarded as personal information.

Treating IP addresses as personal information would have implications for how search engines record the data they need to understand search patterns and correctly bill online advertisers for the number of times their ad is viewed.Search engines have already gone some way to responding to privacy concerns, led by Google which was the first to cut the time it stored search information to 18 months.Google’s bid for online ad tracker DoubleClick is currently being reviewed by EU antitrust regulators amid complaints from rivals, advertisers and lawmakers and others worried the takeover will give the company too much power over online advertising and personal information.

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