1. Home
  2. Beading Crafts
  3. OT: Yahoo snooping

OT: Yahoo snooping

Someone on one of the Yahoo groups I subscribe to posted this message - if you are a Yahoo member, you might want to follow the link. I did - I was wondering why I was getting some new and different spam recently!

*********************************************************** Yahoo is now using something called Web Beacons to track the web surfing of Yahoo Groups members.

Go to this Yahoo page and take a look at their updated privacy statement:

formatting link
About half-way down the page, in the section "Outside the Yahoo! Network", you'll see a little "click here" link that will let you "opt-out" of their new method of snooping. Do this! Once you have clicked that link, you are opted out and will be taken to a page with a "Success" message. BE CAREFUL, because on that page there is a "Cancel Opt-out" button that, if clicked, will UNDO the opt-out. Just close the page without clicking anything.

If you don't mind having Yahoo record every website and every group you visit you can ignore this message . . . :-(

********************************************************

Mj

Reply to
Mj
Loading thread data ...

Mavis

Reply to
AmazeR

That explains it. I have an account that I only use for yahoo groups and this past month it's been spammed at least 5 times a day with things that are actually pertinent to my surfing habits. arg!

Well thanks to you, I've fixed it.

Reply to
Margie

On Tue, 27 Jan 2004 15:50:44 -0500, Mj wrote (in message ):

The program that uses beacons is an amazing one. It uses past history and behavioral modeling to predict where your visitors will go, and where to concentrate advertising. With this software it is possible to track individual users, but even Yahoo doesn't have the kind of computer power necessary to slog through the huge data files the web servers produce on a daily basis.

I used to use this software on a daily basis, and from a user perspective, it really freaked me out. It was so accurate in grouping users and predicting their behavior, it was uncanny. I brought up the idea of visitor privacy many times (especially on medical sites), and was firmly stomped on by the highest levels of management. They paid millions for this stuff, and wanted to know everything they could find out.

However, the company that sold this software appears to have been merged/bought by some bigger fish. I cannot find the new name of the corporation, just that lots of Really Big Corporations had invested some big dollars in the company. It's highly likely that one of these Big Fish absorbed the technology and quietly dissolved the original culprits that developed it.

By all means, do what you can to protect your online privacy. Set your browser preferences to refuse all cookies that do not originate from the referring server. (Like behavioral profiling or ad servers) Go through your cookies and ditch them all on a regular basis. Sure, it's a pain to have to log in to Ebay every time you visit, but the alternative is much, much worse.

BTW, it's not just Yahoo that's snooping. Everyone is snooping, to one degree or another.

Kathy N-V, former Sr. Manager, Online Data Analysis

Reply to
Kathy N-V

Old news, but worth repeating nonetheless. This was circulating over a year ago -- but there are always new people getting on the net, who might not have gotten the message yet.

Celine ___________________________________________________________________________

Reply to
Lee S. Billings

I highly recommend Proxomitron as a privacy-protector. As a nice side effect, it's a customizable pop-up killer (much better than Earthlink's).

Celine

Reply to
Lee S. Billings

One step in privacy protection is to ensure that adware/malware doesn't sneak into your system A couple good, free programs are available that will scan your system and remove cookies from ad-trackers, as well as some of the undesirable programs that sneak in along with things you might think you want.

Ad-Aware at

formatting link
Spybot Search and Destroy
formatting link
I use them both, weekly. Val

Reply to
VManes

Yes, I have seen these little web beacons. They pop up for just a second and are only about an inch square. Figures. Damn them.

Reply to
Kandice Seeber

InspirePoint website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.