Yahoo 'Web Beacons' Spy On And Track Yahoo Users!

K

K.C.

Yahoo tracks all of its users everywhere on the web and the way to opt-out is detailed below. If you have a Yahoo e-mail account or belong to one of Yahoo's many Yahoo groups, this probably applies to you. Yahoo has probably been tracking everything you do online. Follow the instructions precisely to opt out of this. Notice the important part at the very end.

"Yahoo is now using something called 'Web Beacons' to track Yahoo Group users around the net and see what you're doing and where you are going similar to cookies. Yahoo is recording every website and every group you visit.

Take a look at their updated privacy statement:

http://privacy.yahoo.com/privacy

About half-way down the page, in the section on cookies, you will see a link that says web beacons. Click on the phrase web beacons.

http://privacy.yahoo.com/privacy/us/beacons/details.html

That will bring you to a paragraph entitled "Outside the Yahoo Network."

In this section you'll see a little "click here to opt out" link that will let you "opt-out" of their new method of snooping.

Once you have clicked that link, you are exempted. Notice the "Success" message on the top of the next page. Be careful because on that page there is a "Cancel Opt-out" button that, if clicked, will **undo** the opt-out. So don't reflexively click that button, or you will undo the opt-out !
 
Good point, and I was too stupid too look first. :mad: At the same time it didn't require me to sign in which seemed strange as to how it identifies my Yahoo Id. Nothing popped up on Virus or firewall so hope I didn't just do soemthing stupid!
 
Quote from illiquid:

Um, those of you who just "opted out" -- were you sure it was an official yahoo site you linked to?

Just checking. :)
More...

Looks like it is, you can get to "privacy" section from the links at the bottom of a main Yahoo page.
 
I'm sure spyhoo has other means to track what you say and do on the internet. They also manage the email for major ISPs. I shouldn't single out Yahoo, though. They're all doing it. It's just too tempting to classify the thoughts of people.

We all have the right to remain silent I suppose. But for most of us, we already surfed too much and said too much. And when times get bad or if you get famous, you'll realize how human nature never changes, and how people will want to use what you said on the internet 20 years ago against you.

The privacy laws are just not there. That's why they're called "policies."

There needs to be legal standards for the browser so that large organizations like Yahoo can't get away with these types of "creative" cookies.
 
One way to reduce this tracking is the use of Black Hole proxy metho. Search the Google for black hole proxy and how to implement it.
 
This is not as bad as it seems. Yahoo only uses web beacons on their partner's sites. A "web beacon" is nothing more than a transparent image, which when loaded, let's yahoo know that you actually visited one of their advertiser's sites. Web beacons are very common in email marketing, as they let marketers know whether or not you actually opened the email they sent you by checking to see if that transparent web beacon image loaded or not. Just as an example, for yahoo to know if you visited Elite Trader, we would have to have yahoo's web beacon code implemented on our pages (which we don't of course).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top