I received the following message about Yahoo's use of "web beacons" on a Yahoo! Group I'm subscribed to. Regardless of whether or not you are subscribed to any Yahoo! Groups, if you care about your privacy, you might want to opt out of this. Note that you have to opt out on every browser you use.
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. Take a look at their updated privacy statement:
http://privacy.yahoo.com/privacy/us/pixels/details.html
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. I strongly recommend that you do this.
Once you have clicked that link, you are opted out. Notice the "Success" message the top the next page.
Be careful because on that page there is a "Cancel Opt-out" button that, if clicked, will *undo* the opt-out. Feel free to forward this to other groups.
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drmellow- Greg Cohoon
- Knitting Daddy
Comments
It's a lot like security cameras in parking lots... except you can turn them off. Many modern browsers will explicitly not fetch single pixel images (1 pixel high and/or wide), not send cookies for IMG tags, and some will even go so far as to not send a refer thus making the tracking 99.999% impossible.
Face it people, there ain't no such thing as private anymore.