U. S. Internet search giant Google has been urged by EU data protection authorities, to shorten the period it stores images from its controversial Street View web service because of privacy concerns.

Street View allows users to navigate around a 360-degree view of city streets, buildings, traffic and people, using pictures taken by Google's camera vehicles.

Google is being accused of failing to obscure sensitive images and setting its cameras inappropriately, allowing the users to peer over walls into private property. The letter suggests that Google should only retain the images for six months as doing so would strike the right balance between the protection of privacy and the ability to eliminate false positives.

Privacy authorities, in a letter to the company's Global Counsel, Peter Fleischer, wrote, "The Working Party believes that a maximum retention of six months for the unblurred copies of the images would strike the right balance between the protection of privacy and the ability to eliminate false positives".

As the Swiss have also objected to Google capturing other personal information, such as license plates, Google has agreed to the one-year, image-retention time limit.