Recent studies on dilute magnetic semiconductors have largely been focused on hydrogen induced giant magnetization. On the contrary, there are hardly any attempts to establish whether the H-induced magnetization is a permanent feature or likely to degrade with time. This aspect warrants a firm confirmation prior to planning their possible applications in spintronics and microelectronics. Motivated by this, we have systematically investigated this behaviour in Co doped TiO 2 . In one study, we gave successive re-heat treatment to hydrogenated pellets and studied their magnetic, transport and electronic properties versus re-heating time. In another, we stored the hydrogenated sample in dry atmosphere for several months and studied the ageing effect on the induced ferromagnetism. The H-induced magnetization quickly vanishes upon re-heating the specimen; in addition, it also tends to degrade gradually with passage of time. The electronic and transport properties show a close parallelism, without any departure from structural properties. On the other hand, the Co-induced ferromagnetism, albeit a weak effect, does not show such degradation effects. As regards the mechanism of ferromagnetism, the oxygen vacancies are suggested to mediate the coupling.