If You Use Yahoo Groups...

[badstar]

Hey people...got another question for the masses.

Who uses yahoo groups?

For those of you who do, are you familiar with their policy on "web beacons"? (I think that's what they're called?)

Now, I know that it's really pretty impossible to keep my web use from being tracked and I don't do anything illegal to be worried about, but I still don't really want to be tracked around the web, and if I can avoid it another means of tracking being put on me, I will.

My minor dilemma:

Everyone uses yahoo groups.

For some things that I'm involved in right now, I pretty much NEED to join some groups- either that or be badly out of several loops. I stopped using my yahoo account ages ago, and yahogroups along with it. There are also a number of groups that I WANT to join.

I know that you can join yahoo groups and that there's an option to turn off this web beacon thing. I've also heard that it gets randomly turned back on for you after a while and that you have to go in and turn it back off again. Can anyone confirm any truth to this? It won't bother me so much if I can turn it off and forget it.

thanks for any info!


cross-posted to aposoc-l

Comments

here you go

[twistedcat.livejournal.com]

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. 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.

Re: here you go

[seaya.livejournal.com]

See, it's not new. It's at least 5 years old. At least.

Re: here you go

[fuego.livejournal.com]

well i know it's not new, but i've been not using yahoo at all for quite a while- it hasn't been 5 years, it was right after baltwash moved to epistolary- and i only heard of the web beacon thing after i stopped using it, when a lot of people were saying that yahoo was doing this "new thing"...to which i just didn't really care because i wasn't using it...I know that they had had other policies that I had objected to which I was able to opt out of (like the one where they sent you spam emails), but I had heard that this one automatically turned itself back on after a while- though it's always been second or third hand infrmation, and until the last few weeks, I've had no reason to care. but now I've talked to a number of people and found out that so far no one that I personally know has had this suddenly turn itself back on so I'm willing to give it a shot.

Thanks!

Re: here you go

[majorchaos.livejournal.com]

First, sorry an unknown is jumping in here, I was reading the friends list of a friend and found this information.

As an addition to the "watch our for the Cancel" button, make note of the "NOTE" just below the link to "opt-out", copied here...

Note: This opt-out applies to a specific browser rather than a specific user. Therefore you will have to opt-out separately from each computer or browser that you use.

If I understand that correctly, every computer you on, you need to do the opt out. I would guess also, that you might want to do it with every browser you use too. Just to be safe. :D

Re: here you go

[fuego.livejournal.com]

no need to apologize, thanks so much for pointing that out, I may never have noticed.

Re: here you go

[fuego.livejournal.com]

cool...thanks for the clarification, what you said about being confused because of the browsers makes good sense. I plan to just sign in on one computer, subscribe to the lists I want/need on a non-yahoo account, opt out of the tracking thing and be done with it.

Do you know if it's that they somehow put these things on every browser that you use to read the email, or just every browser that you actually sign into yahoo on?