Yahoo! believes strongly in empowering users through providing transparency into our data collection and use practices and providing tools to exercise user choice in this regard. This is evidenced through Yahoo’s leadership in partnering with the DAA and others in industry to develop ground breaking privacy enhancing tools for consumers, such as CLEAR Ad Notice, Ad Interest Manager, and Persistent Opt-outs, not to mention footer links that help visitors learn more About our Ads and connect to our privacy center which carries a wealth of easily accessible information.
Recently each of the major web browser vendors have released features that place user choice tools within the web browser itself, responding to regulatory calls for “Do Not Track” capabilities. Yahoo! is working with each of these vendors to better understand their solutions and how best to align our efforts. In our recent response to the FTC request for comment, Yahoo! highlighted that some of these approaches would require websites to be reengineered to read new header signals broadcast to web publishers. Further, Microsoft’s introduction of Traffic Protection Lists focuses on 3rd party data collection and could be very disruptive for users, even blocking the basic rendering of content. This approach “breaks” many websites, including Yahoo!, that aggregate or license content from third parties– or support and supply content for third party sites.
Yahoo! values the Federal Trade Commission’s statement with respect to DNT in their proposed privacy framework that “any such mechanism should not undermine the benefits that online behavioral advertising has to offer, by funding online content and services and providing personalized advertisements that many consumers value.” Yahoo! believes approaches that allow users to consume content as expected and opt-out of Interest-based advertising and content data use – essentially preserving the customization our users have come to rely on with Yahoo! – are the preferred way to approach DNT.
Shane Wiley
Sr. Director – Privacy & Data Governance
Yahoo!
