Is this how you're supposed to treat clients?
Posted in Tech on December 8th, 2009 by admin – Be the first to comment
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Yahoo! Introduces Ad Interest Manager
Provides Consumers with Greater Transparency and Control over Their
Online Advertising Experience
WASHINGTON, Dec 07, 2009 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Today Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) released a beta version of a new
consumer tool called Ad Interest Manager, which takes transparency in
online advertising to a new level for building user trust. Ad Interest
Manager http://privacy.yahoo.com/aim
is a central place where Yahoo! visitors can see a concise summary of
their online activity and make easy, constructive choices about their
exposure to interest-based advertising served from the Yahoo! Ad Network.
“Ads tailored to users' interests make online experiences more
compelling and user-focused, and the new tool Yahoo! is launching today
will provide transparency into how Yahoo!'s interest-based advertising
works,” said Yahoo! Vice President of Policy and Head of Privacy, Anne
Toth. “Yahoo! is committed to providing consumers with increased
transparency and control when they are online. Ad Interest Manager will
show users what interests we think they have, and also let them edit and
change those interests to reflect the most up-to-date information.” Anne
Toth also pointed out: “Importantly, users who don't want interest-based
ads can turn them off completely.”
Yahoo!'s new Ad Interest Manager tool:
-
Provides a central point where Yahoo! visitors can assert even greater
control over their online experience. -
Gives visitors an unparalleled view into the information used to
deliver interest-based advertising. -
Shows the visitor both Yahoo!'s educated guesses about their interests
and a summary of observations, along with other information they have
provided. -
Provides a list of specific interest categories that Yahoo! has placed
a user into and lets people turn those categories off. -
Allows people who don't want to see interest-based ads to turn them
off entirely.
“Yahoo! has long provided its users with products and services for free,
thanks to a business model based almost entirely on advertising, and
we've found that consumers are more likely to click on advertising that
speaks directly to them and their interests,” said Yahoo! Vice President
and General Manager of Display Advertising, David Zinman. “With the
introduction of Ad Interest Manager, users can not only get a better
understanding of how the process works, but they can also communicate
better with Yahoo! and our advertisers about what most interests them.”
Yahoo!'s Ad Interest Manager is currently available in beta in the U.S.
and will soon be made available to UK and European users. Planned future
enhancements to the Ad Interest Manager will also let users add
categories of interest that Yahoo! may have missed.
To see what the new Ad Interest Manager looks like and how it works,
please visit http://privacy.yahoo.com/aim.
Yahoo! was one of the first companies to implement a layered privacy
center http://info.yahoo.com/privacy/us/yahoo/details.html
model more than eight years ago, which provides people with a central
place to understand and control their privacy online, as well as their
options when it comes to the use of personal data. This information is
coupled with our industry-leading data-retention policy http://ycorpblog.com/2008/12/17/your-data-goes-incognito/,
which anonymizes most Web log data within 90 days. The policy also
strives to ensure that Yahoo! retains data only long enough to serve the
business and create the highest-quality user experiences, while
simultaneously maintaining the ability to fight fraud, secure systems,
and meet legal obligations.
About Yahoo!
Yahoo! attracts hundreds of millions of users every month through its
innovative technology and engaging content and services, making it one
of the most trafficked Internet destinations and a world-class online
media company. Yahoo!'s vision is to be the center of people's online
lives by delivering personally relevant, meaningful Internet
experiences. Yahoo! is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. For more
information, visit http://pressroom.yahoo.com
or the company's blog, Yodel Anecdotal http://yodel.yahoo.com.
Yahoo! is the trademark and/or registered trademark of Yahoo! Inc.
All other names are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their
respective owners.
SOURCE: Yahoo! Inc.
Yahoo! Corporate Communications
Nina Blackwell, 408-349-3341
nblackwell@yahoo-inc.com
Amber Allman, 202-777-1053
aallman@yahoo-inc.com
Copyright Business Wire 2009
| Download PDF
|
Add to briefcase
« Previous Release | Next Release »
Yahoo! Introduces Ad Interest Manager
Provides Consumers with Greater Transparency and Control over Their
Online Advertising Experience
WASHINGTON, Dec 07, 2009 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Today Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) released a beta version of a new
consumer tool called Ad Interest Manager, which takes transparency in
online advertising to a new level for building user trust. Ad Interest
Manager http://privacy.yahoo.com/aim
is a central place where Yahoo! visitors can see a concise summary of
their online activity and make easy, constructive choices about their
exposure to interest-based advertising served from the Yahoo! Ad Network.
“Ads tailored to users' interests make online experiences more
compelling and user-focused, and the new tool Yahoo! is launching today
will provide transparency into how Yahoo!'s interest-based advertising
works,” said Yahoo! Vice President of Policy and Head of Privacy, Anne
Toth. “Yahoo! is committed to providing consumers with increased
transparency and control when they are online. Ad Interest Manager will
show users what interests we think they have, and also let them edit and
change those interests to reflect the most up-to-date information.” Anne
Toth also pointed out: “Importantly, users who don't want interest-based
ads can turn them off completely.”
Yahoo!'s new Ad Interest Manager tool:
-
Provides a central point where Yahoo! visitors can assert even greater
control over their online experience. -
Gives visitors an unparalleled view into the information used to
deliver interest-based advertising. -
Shows the visitor both Yahoo!'s educated guesses about their interests
and a summary of observations, along with other information they have
provided. -
Provides a list of specific interest categories that Yahoo! has placed
a user into and lets people turn those categories off. -
Allows people who don't want to see interest-based ads to turn them
off entirely.
“Yahoo! has long provided its users with products and services for free,
thanks to a business model based almost entirely on advertising, and
we've found that consumers are more likely to click on advertising that
speaks directly to them and their interests,” said Yahoo! Vice President
and General Manager of Display Advertising, David Zinman. “With the
introduction of Ad Interest Manager, users can not only get a better
understanding of how the process works, but they can also communicate
better with Yahoo! and our advertisers about what most interests them.”
Yahoo!'s Ad Interest Manager is currently available in beta in the U.S.
and will soon be made available to UK and European users. Planned future
enhancements to the Ad Interest Manager will also let users add
categories of interest that Yahoo! may have missed.
To see what the new Ad Interest Manager looks like and how it works,
please visit http://privacy.yahoo.com/aim.
Yahoo! was one of the first companies to implement a layered privacy
center http://info.yahoo.com/privacy/us/yahoo/details.html
model more than eight years ago, which provides people with a central
place to understand and control their privacy online, as well as their
options when it comes to the use of personal data. This information is
coupled with our industry-leading data-retention policy http://ycorpblog.com/2008/12/17/your-data-goes-incognito/,
which anonymizes most Web log data within 90 days. The policy also
strives to ensure that Yahoo! retains data only long enough to serve the
business and create the highest-quality user experiences, while
simultaneously maintaining the ability to fight fraud, secure systems,
and meet legal obligations.
About Yahoo!
Yahoo! attracts hundreds of millions of users every month through its
innovative technology and engaging content and services, making it one
of the most trafficked Internet destinations and a world-class online
media company. Yahoo!'s vision is to be the center of people's online
lives by delivering personally relevant, meaningful Internet
experiences. Yahoo! is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. For more
information, visit http://pressroom.yahoo.com
or the company's blog, Yodel Anecdotal http://yodel.yahoo.com.
Yahoo! is the trademark and/or registered trademark of Yahoo! Inc.
All other names are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their
respective owners.
SOURCE: Yahoo! Inc.
Yahoo! Corporate Communications
Nina Blackwell, 408-349-3341
nblackwell@yahoo-inc.com
Amber Allman, 202-777-1053
aallman@yahoo-inc.com
Copyright Business Wire 2009
On December 23, 2008, Yahoo (YHOO) created a “complicance guide for law enforcement,” detailing what kinds of user data the company keeps and for how long, and how government officials should go about requesting it.
Check out the annotated documents →
News Corp (NWS) social network MySpace published a similar document in 2006.
Though Yahoo's guide “is not meant to be distributed to individuals or organizations that are not law enforcement entities,” we obtained both through WikiLeaks.
Given all the controversy over copyright infringement, Internet child predators, and even simple cyber security, its obvious these companies had to create these documents. We suppose Yahoo and MySpace rivals Facebook, Google, AOL and all the rest hand out documents just like these to law enforcement.
That doesn't stop the docs from being a little bit creepy anyway. That's because they sometimes read like menus for a data-hungry Big Brother.
For example, Yahoo's document helpfully alerts law enforcement that if they'd like to read a user's instant messanger logs, they better ask within 45 days and come bearing a 2703(d) order. That is, unless there's “imminent danger of death or serious physical injury.” If that's the case, there's another letter to fax entirely.
MySpace wants police to know they can access user ID, IP addresses and login date stamps for up to 90 days after a user deletes their account.
Check out the annotated documents →
More and more, search isn’t just a matter of lots of text and ten blue links. Mixed media – think pictures and video – is a big deal. And an important Yahoo executive recently explained how this affects search from the perspective of his company, search engine users, and publishers.
Larry Cornett, Vice President of Product Management and Design for Yahoo Search, said in an interview with Abby Johnson that Yahoo is attempting to create a “personally relevant search experience” for people. The company wants to provide a comprehensive amount of information so that individuals can always find what they’re looking for.
To this end, Yahoo’s introduced a universal header that helps determine users’ intent. It can help direct someone who’s searching for a football player to Yahoo Sports, for example.
Of course, this approach means that publishers should take more than text search results into account. According to Cornett, they need to pay attention to how their brand is portrayed in image and video search results, and on Twitter, too.
Cornett then boiled the matter down to a fairly simple question publishers should ask themselves: “Am I really being represented the way I want to be in every one of these search experiences?”
If this article has any relation to MS and Yahoo (which I doubt), then you can see why this wasn’t a title too:
Xbox 360 – It’s all fun and games until it RROD’s!
The fact is these products use batteries, any battery will degrade overtime and with charge cycles just like the batteries that are used for remote controls and the 360 pad.
The cell type used in these batteries for the DS3 is the same for laptops and are very reliable, I think the article was very poorly written and seems to group the PS3 unjustifiably with unreliable products, which quite simply is not fact.
I know that my pad last for days on end without charging and nobody I know has ever had problems (apart from when I got a bit too competitive on Beijing 2008)
Has anybody actually had problems charging their pad?
Maybe the writer should just get some coal for xmas, after all the article does mention this:
“But I’m starting to think that coal isn’t a bad gift at all. For one thing, it lasts forever”.
Go buy some coal then.
The former Autodesk CEO teased the lunchtime audience at UBS’s media summit after a joke or two (one about low-quality “Russian bride” online ads). When she didn’t get the intended reaction, she told them she’s used to CAD conferences and talking to engineers. She said, “You guys are supposed to be interesting!”
She wasn’t done yet. Ms. Bartz noted that Yahoo is attracting a large share of teenage and twentysomething Internet users and that not all of them have restricted themselves to Facebook. “They’re smarter than that — they’re open to other things, occasionally,” she said.
The reality, she added, is that Yahoo’s competition is not with the Yelps and Microsofts of the world but with offline advertising. “We have so much more education to do,” she said, pointing out that 95% of advertising isn’t Internet-based. “That is an open market.”
Ms. Bartz acknowledged that Google will maintain its lead in search ads — “you’ve got to play the hand you’re dealt here” — but that Yahoo is focused on improving revenue per search and maintaining its considerable audience (it serves 10 billion ads a day, she said).
“People don’t come from the outside world to do a search on Yahoo,” she said, but the company aims to attract them to Yahoo sites, then “provide them a great search experience, so they don’t feel the need to leave.”
Yahoo Sells All Its Users Private Email Contents to U.S. Agencies for Small Price
After earlier reports this week that Yahoo had blocked an FOIA Freedom of Information release of its “law enforcement and intelligence price list”, someone helpfully provided a copy of the Yahoo company’s spying guide to the whistleblower web site Cryptome.org.
The 17-page guide, which Yahoo has tried to suppress via legal letters to the Cryptome.org site run by freedom of information champion John Young, describes Yahoo’s policies on keeping the data of Yahoo Email and Yahoo Groups users, as well as the surveillance and spying capabilities it can give to the U.S. government and its agencies.
The Yahoo document is a price list for these spying services and has already resulted in many people closing down their accounts in protest. However, closing a Yahoo account is not as easy as one might expect: users have reported great difficulty in finding the link to delete their account, and, Yahoo will still keep data for another 90 days.
If you ask Yahoo! to delete your Yahoo! account, in most cases your account will be deactivated and then deleted from our user registration database in approximately 90 days. This delay is necessary to discourage users from engaging in fraudulent activity.
Please note that any information that we have copied may remain in back-up storage for some period of time after your deletion request. This may be the case even though no information about your account remains in our active user databases.
Many government leaders and officials around Africa, Asia and Latin America are known by Mathaba to widely be using Yahoo, Gmail, and Hotmail in spite of these Email services being hosted on U.S. computers and the ease that gives the hosts to access their data.. Mathaba has also long been aware of a great many business people, politicians and even Presidents who use the “free” web-based email services of Yahoo for their Email communications, thus making it easy for the U.S. and its owners to spy on them with negligible cost.
Cryptome also published lawful data-interception guides for Cox Communications, SBC, Cingular, Nextel, GTE and other telecoms and Internet service providers.
But of all those companies, it appears to be Yahoo’s lawyers alone who have been stupid enough to try to issue a “DMCA takedown notice” to Cryptome demanding the document be removed. Yahoo claims that publication of the document is a copyright violation, and gave Cryptome owner John Young a Thursday deadline for removing the document.
We estimate Yahoo stand a near-zero chance of success given that Young has thousands of intelligence and other leaked documents on his site and in the past decade has yet to remove a single document upon legal threats, the same 10-year track record held by Mathaba on documents on British Intelligence in spite of having computers seized and properties raided.
Mathaba is now also hosting the Yahoo leaked document on its servers around the world, and the cat is long out of the bag with the original document having been downloaded and distributed by many already.
When John Young was asked if there was anything he wouldn’t reveal on his site — a fault in the President’s Secret Service detail, for instance — he said, “Well, I’m actually looking for that information right now”, much to the chagrin of those who believe that the U.S. government and its hopelessly corrupt agencies should have a right to supress information from the public.
The Compliance Guide reveals, as has been known to Mathaba prior to the leak via our own sources, that Yahoo does not retain a copy of e-mails that an account holder sends unless that customer sets up the account to store those e-mails. Yahoo also cannot search for or produce deleted e-mails once they’ve been removed from a user’s trash folder.
The guide also reveals that the company retains the IP addresses from which a user logs in for just one year. But the company’s logs of IP addresses used to register new accounts for the first time go back to 1999. The contents of accounts on Flickr, the photo sharing and storage site which Yahoo also owns, are purged as soon as a user deactivates the account.
Chats conducted through the company’s Web Messenger service may be saved on Yahoo’s server if one of the parties in the correspondence set up their account to archive chats. This pertains to the web-based version of the chat service, however. Yahoo does not save the content of chats for consumers who use the downloadable Web Messenger client on their computer.
Instant message logs are retained 45 to 60 days and includes an account holder’s friends list, and the date and times the user communicated with them.
Young responded to Yahoo’s takedown request with a defiant note:
I cannot find at the Copyright Office a grant of copyright for the Yahoo spying document hosted on Cryptome. To assure readers Yahoo’s copyright claim is valid and not another hoary bluff without substantiation so common under DMCA bombast please send a copy of the copyright grant for publication on Cryptome.
Until Yahoo provides proof of copyright, the document will remain available to the public for it provides information that is in the public interest about Yahoo’s contradictory privacy policy and should remain a topic of public debate on ISP unacknowledged spying complicity with officials for lucrative fees.
Note: Yahoo’s exclamation point is surely trademarked so omitted here.
The company responded that a copyright notice is optional for works created after March 1, 1989 and repeated its demand for removal on Thursday. For now, the document remains on the Cryptome site.
Threat Level reported Tuesday that muckraker and Indiana University graduate student Christopher Soghoian had asked all agencies within the Department of Justice, under a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, to provide him with a copy of the pricing list supplied by telecoms and internet service providers for the surveillance services they offer government agencies. But before the agencies could provide the data, Verizon and Yahoo intervened and filed an objection on grounds that the information was proprietary and that the companies would be ridiculed and publicly shamed were their surveillance price sheets made public.
Yahoo wrote in its objection letter that if its pricing information were disclosed to Soghoian, he would use it “to ’shame’ Yahoo! and other companies — and to ’shock’ their customers.”
“Therefore, release of Yahoo!’s information is reasonably likely to lead to impairment of its reputation for protection of user privacy and security, which is a competitive disadvantage for technology companies,” the company added.
The price list that Yahoo tried to prevent the government from releasing to Soghoian appears in one small paragraph in the 17-page leaked document. According to this list, Yahoo charges the government about $30 to $40 for the contents, including e-mail, of a subscriber’s account. It charges $40 to $80 for the contents of a Yahoo group.
Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and other U.S. “social networking” sites are at minimum providing information in similar fashion to U.S. agencies, and in some cases have also received substantial funding by U.S. government related entities as a most efficient and cost-effective means of spying on their users around the world. — Mathaba
– Includes extensive reporting by Wired.com’s Kim Zetter
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