Info Gathering/Sharing Opt-Outs

[bad hammy]

I’m picking on Yahoo for now, but I am sure this kind of nonsense is widely used throughout the web and business world. Turns out if you have a Yahoo account they have infested your machine with a cookie-like file that they call a web beacon which tracks your web surfing while surfing on both Yahoo and non-Yahoo sites. Yahoo then sells this information to other companies (they say in aggregate with no ‘personal’ info, but I am not a trusting soul in these matters). There is an opt-out option, but it is good for only one browser on one computer. If you use multiple browsers and/or multiple computers you have to opt-out using each one.

Shouldn’t these kinds of things be opt-ins?? And one opt-out per user should be required. Of course if you really get worked up about this crap I guess your surfing days are about over . . .


Info about web beacons: http://info.yahoo.com/privacy/us/yahoo/webbeacons/

Yahoo’s opt-out: http://info.yahoo.com/privacy/us/yahoo/ ... tails.html

[Marlow]

The premise of the movie Eagle Eye (clumsy as it was) is that anyone who wants the info bad enough, can know everything there is to know about you. I don't disbelieve it, to put it as mildly as I can. Individual privacy is obsolete. No one, not even poor little Henry David Thoreau on Walden Pond, is 'off-the-grid'!

[DrJay]

Gene Hackman was off the grid, then Will Smith made a phone call....

[tandfman]

Re: Info Gathering/Sharing Opt-Outs

There is an opt-out option, but it is good for only one browser on one computer. If you use multiple browsers and/or multiple computers you have to opt-out using each one.

Shouldn’t these kinds of things be opt-ins?? And one opt-out per user should be required.

It turns out that the opt-out covers multiple users of the same brower/computer. Mrs. tandfman and I have separate Yahoo accounts. I just did the opt out thing, and it appears that we're both opted out, at least on this computer.