Media Interest Manager is only available to a limited number of random users at this time and requires that you be logged-into your Yahoo! account to access the tool.  If you’re one of the lucky few that have access, you’ll be able to select from 100 interest categories (you can change these at any time).

It’s important to note that our interest based advertising and content opt-out (Ad Interest Manager) does not affect the interests you declare within MIM.   If the opt-out is selected, MIM will not override your preference, but will tailor your experience based on your MIM interest selections.  To stop using MIM simply deselect all previously highlighted media interests and close the tool.

We’re excited to be expanding our privacy suite of Interest Managers with the addition of MIM.  This release demonstrates Yahoo’s continued commitment to extend more choices to users to further customize their Yahoo! experiences.  This is very much an early concept release and you should expect to see tremendous evolution of Media Interest Manager throughout 2012 and beyond!

Shane Wiley
VP, Privacy & Data Governance
Yahoo!

Yahoo! and many others in our industry — in partnership with trade association leadership, consumer advocates, academics, and regulators — have been working diligently to develop technical specifications and compliance guidelines for the implementation of the ‘Do Not Track’ signal.  In a recent Wall Street Journal article, an editor chose what we see as a misleading headline that has led some to unfortunately believe that Yahoo! and industry are somehow not supportive of responding to the ‘Do Not Track’ browser signal.  This couldn’t be further from the truth.

Put simply, Yahoo! was among the first to announce that we would support and implement a robust response to the ‘Do Not Track’ browser signal, and we also fully support the implementation of workable, universal standards.   The road to such standards is never easy, but we have been leading the way and will continue to do so.  The process of developing the ‘Do Not Track’ standard is on-going within the World Wide Web Consortium, or W3C.  Most recently in face-to-face meetings in Washington, DC, multiple proposals for key issues such as first party and third party definition and permitted uses of data were discussed.  There were five proposals in total; I was a lead author on one of those proposals.  It’s unfair – and inaccurate — to state since Yahoo! and others offered one proposal, that we are somehow attacking other proposals.  In fact, commonality was found in some of the leading proposals and the working group is in the process of finalizing common language.  This is a process of working together to maximize user privacy protections while minimizing expansive costs to the Internet where vast amounts of free content are available to consumers.  This is not, as the Wall Street Journal headline suggests, about one or more companies “leading charges against” ‘Do Not Track’.  This is about working on and advocating for the best possible standard for consumers and for the Internet.

While the misleading headline may get more attention for the Wall Street Journal, we wanted to set the record straight that Yahoo! continues to support the W3C Tracking Protection Working Group and the multi-stakeholder process it embodies.  For us, working hard to earn and keep the trust of our users is just plain common sense. 

Shane Wiley
VP, Privacy & Data Governance
Yahoo!

Yahoo’s DNT solution has been in development since last year and is implemented in-line with Digital Advertising Alliance’s (DAA) principles which provide guidelines for the appropriate use of online behavioral advertising (also called “interest-based” advertising) and multi-site data – AND – our proposal to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the international standards body that manages many of the technical elements of the Internet. Of course, we will continue to follow further DNT-related developments in the U.S., Europe, and elsewhere very closely.

How does it work?
If you’re using a more recent web browser you may have an option to set a DNT preference (location varies by browser). If you activate this feature, the DNT signal is sent to our servers when you view websites where Yahoo! collects data. When our servers receive the DNT signal, this activates our existing opt-out process. With DNT turned on, Yahoo! will no longer score your activities for advertising or content interests and no longer personalize your ads and content based on those interest scores.

Yahoo! is deeply committed to innovation and bringing world class experiences to our users. To do this, Yahoo! will continue to collect information for purposes such as fraud and security, financial reporting, and to improve our products for your benefit. It’s important to note that you will continue to see ads — but without the advantage of being personalized to your ad interests.

NOTE: Curious to learn what we believe your ad interests are? Please check out Ad Interest Manager to view and manage your ad interests or opt-out.

When will the rollout be completed?
We’ve already begun the implementation process and will continue the rollout to our systems around the globe with completion targeted for early summer. Several of our advertising platforms (Right Media and interclick) and properties already support the DNT standard – with more adding support every week. Once you come into contact with a system that supports DNT, your opt-out will be set and apply to your interactions with Yahoo! going forward.

The Yahoo! Privacy Team is proud of our history in providing enhanced transparency through the AdChoices Icon program and now providing enhanced control through Do Not Track (and Ad Interest Manager). We’d like to thank our product and engineering teams for their efforts to make DNT a reality for users and to our executive team for supporting us along the way.

Shane Wiley
VP, Privacy & Data Governance
Yahoo!

Let’s focus on self-regulation for a moment. Industry has made incredible strides in just a few years – implementing a code to give users contextual notice and controls over online behavioral advertising. This effort requires advertisers, publishers, ad networks and many other players to take responsibility and to accept a role in presenting consumers with an Ad Choices icon which, when clicked, tells them more about what is going on behind the scenes in ad delivery and gives them an opportunity to opt out of the use of their data for this kind of customized advertising. With a single click, the opt-out can apply to the vast majority of systems serving such ads today. No more need to opt out from every website individually or ad serving entity. This is a huge improvement for consumers uncomfortable with this practice. These icons are now nearly ubiquitous across the web, and certainly across Yahoo.com.

But industry players did not stop there. We have clearly and demonstrably answered the call from policymakers to bring more certainty to an understanding of the use of Do Not Track technology while providing consumers the services and innovation they expect and demand.

The Digital Advertising Alliance has introduced a new code on the collection and use of Multisite Data (http://www.aboutads.info/msdprinciples) which addresses these issues. This code has strict prohibitions on the collection, use or transfer of such data to determine adverse terms or ineligibility for employment, credit, housing or insurance. It further touches on sensitive data including the personal information of children, health records, and financial account records. It acknowledges there are some operational or systems management purposes for which companies will always need to collect data like fraud prevention, billing, or consumer safety. Yahoo! is proud to have been a key advocate for many of the provisions of this new code. Once again, industry’s proactive efforts on privacy have raised the bar.

As industry moves forward to address new issues in the marketplace through codes of practice, consumers benefit from timely implementation of broad-based changes that can be readily enforced by the FTC. We are gratified to see Administration and FTC statements embracing these self-regulatory efforts as an important step in protecting consumers’ privacy online, which signals that we are on the right track. While there is a lot to be worked out and the devil is always in the details, we appreciate the work they’ve done and the recognition that self-regulation has been working.

We understand the online landscape is constantly evolving. As an innovator in the online space, Yahoo! will continue to be at the forefront of industry best practices and self-regulatory initiatives. It is the best and quickest way to introduce protections into the marketplace without sacrificing innovation and value creation for consumers. We commend the Administration for its understanding that such codes are a key ingredient in a successful privacy framework for the information age. Yahoo! will continue to be at the very front of efforts to give consumers the transparency and choices they want while continuing to create innovative, free products every day.

leslie
dunlap
vp, privacy, policy and trust at Yahoo!

At Yahoo! we have always taken privacy very seriously. Privacy is a core element in building our users’ trust, which is in turn core to us. We build our world-class products with privacy and trust in mind, and in order to succeed we strongly believe that the very first targets of education and awareness should be within the very inside of our company. This is why on February 1st the Yahoo! Miami office will host an invitation-only discussion on the latest global and regional developments in privacy. We will share perspective on how Yahoo! has maintained the hard earned role as a leader in building and maintaining user trust, how Yahoo! innovates with privacy in mind to give users transparency and choice in their online experiences, and what the landscape looks like for the online industry, as well as an overview of legislation affecting user privacy especially those affecting Latin America. There will be a Q&A session and the event will be videotaped – all in Spanish – for audiences unable to attend.

laura
juanes
director, international privacy for Yahoo!

Before an ad interest can be determined, a category must first be created. Yahoo! has nearly 400 standard interest categories in the US (these can viewed from Ad Interest Manager). Categories fall across a range of topics such as iPods, Ford Trucks, Kitchen Remodeling or European Travel interests. Once a category is created, the next step is scoring interest in that category.

The birth of an ad interest begins when an interest scoring rule is triggered in our backend ad interest systems. Only a few key events are reviewed for scoring today: searches, page view, ad views, and ad clicks. Note – our new mail system processes email keywords similarly to “searches”. These events are funneled to a special set of servers at Yahoo! which score each event for interest in a category. Each category may give different scores to different events. For example, for an interest in Gifting Flowers the system will typically weight a search higher than a page view, whereas the Truck interest category may score a visit to the Yahoo! Autos site higher than a generic “truck” search. The resulting event score is then added to the existing score for an ad interest in relationship to an anonymous browser cookie.

Once an event has been scored for an ad interest it is held in these systems for a short period of time just in case something fails and data needs to be reprocessed. After a few days the raw event information is purged from these systems and only the resulting scores remain. It’s important to note that when a user opts-out of receiving interest-based ads, their activity is no longer sent to our backend ad interest systems for scoring (this includes from the new Yahoo! Mail platform) AND ads are no longer selected for that user based on interests.

Now that we have a score for an ad interest, the question of its life span can be addressed. Ad interest scores at Yahoo! “decay” – meaning that each day that goes by, each ad interest category will slowly reduce its score for a browser cookie. Each ad interest category has a different decay rate – tied to how long it typically takes to make a purchase decision. For example, an interest in Gifting Flowers may live a very short period of time – less than a week. Whereas an interest in Trucks lasts longer. While most ad interest categories will decay out scores within a few weeks, the maximum decay is about 90 days.

Interest scoring and decaying are always occurring at the same time. On some days activities may increase the score in a particular ad interest category while other interests are decaying because no activity occurs in relationship to them. If a browser cookie event isn’t processed through our backend systems for 90 days, all ad interests for that browser cookie will decay out.

That’s it! In quick review, the steps are: ad interest category creation, select event scoring, raw data purging, and category interest decay.

To learn more about other forms of log data retention at Yahoo!, please read this blog article.

To learn more about interest based advertising at Yahoo!, view what we believe your ad interests are, and see other general ad interest related information, please visit http://privacy.yahoo.com/aim .

Shane Wiley
VP, Privacy & Data Governance
Yahoo!

Yahoo!’s Chief Trust Officer discusses privacy in the digital age with top representatives across Internet companies, media, think tanks, associations and more at pii2011.

“Yahoo! is extremely pleased with the verdict. We thank the court for the opportunity to be heard, and we thank the jury for their time and attention to the case, particularly given the split schedule for trial” said Kevin Kramer, Yahoo!’s Vice President for IP Litigation. The court conducted trial on April 27-29, then took a break and resumed trial on May 9, 2011. “Despite the split schedule, all 8 jurors faithfully attended trial every day, and Yahoo! is grateful for their dedicated service,” Kramer explained.

“This is an important win in our ongoing efforts to protect Yahoo!’s business and its freedom to operate on the Internet,” said Jeanine Hayes, Yahoo!’s Head of Global IP. “Yahoo! respects intellectual property rights, but we need to defend ourselves when we determine that patent infringement claims made against us are unfounded.”

This is not the first time Yahoo! has successfully defended itself in the Eastern District of Texas. Last August, Yahoo! prevailed in a patent infringement action brought by Bright Response, LLC. In that case, Bright Response accused Yahoo!’s Sponsored Search of infringing patent claims related to the processing of electronic messages, but the jury returned a verdict that the patent was both not infringed and invalid.

• Both Microsoft and Google apply a multistep process to de-identify search log file data. However, neither of these companies completes their respective de-identification processes for search log files until the 18 month mark.
• In Yahoo!’s upcoming policy change for search log files, we will be applying the same method we use today for de-identification. We are simply going to apply it 18 months once the policy goes into effect.

Yahoo! takes a 4-step approach to de-identifying search log file data.

• Step 1: Delete IP address for most search log files and apply a one-way secret hash to the limited IP addresses that are needed to help our systems detect and defend against fraudulent activity.
• Step 2: One-way secret hash (a form of encryption) unique identifiers from browser cookies.
• Step 3: Same as above but we additionally delete half of each identifier associated with a Yahoo! ID.  We take this extra step for registration IDs because, unlike browser cookies that only identify a unique browser, we do associate these with personal information like names and email address.
• Step 4: Look for patterns common to personally identifying information such as credit card number formats, Social Security number format, telephone numbers, street addresses and non-famous names that often appear in search log files – and then replace those values so it’s no longer identifying to anyone. We would know that a telephone number was searched, for example, but don’t keep the number that was entered.

This process above is what we use today and will remain the same for search log files going forward – only now we will be using a timeframe consistent with what others industry players have been using since at least 2008.

Anne Toth
Chief Trust Officer

In late 2008, after a careful review of our data systems and needs and after a great deal of discussion among policymakers about how long search companies should hold search log file data, Yahoo! announced a log file data retention policy that set us apart from the rest of our industry. We worked to minimize our log file retention to 90-days for most log file data, noting certain exceptions where we hold raw data for up to 6 months for fraud and security purposes and as long as necessary to meet our legal obligations. Our goal with this log file data retention policy was to continue to offer best-in-class, competitive products while striving to minimize how much raw data we held.

Today our goals remain the same – keep data as long as we need to and meet our consumers’ expectations on trust. While these things are fundamental to us, over the past several years it’s clear that the Internet has changed, our business has changed, and the competitive landscape has changed.  We have been reevaluating our log file data retention policy in light of these changes and as a result of this review we are moving to align our log file data retention policy closer to the competitive norm across the industry.  That means that after this new policy goes into effect, we will no longer apply the 90-day retention policy to raw search logs or other log file data.  We will hold raw search log files for 18 months and we will be closely examining what the right policy and time frame should be for other log file data.  In announcing this change, we have gone back to the drawing board to ensure that our policies will support the innovative products we want to deliver for our consumers.

Yahoo! has not been standing still on privacy. Over the past 3 years we have focused enormous resources on front-end transparency and meaningful choice for consumers. This is evidenced by our Ad Interest Manager tool and our commitment to CLEAR Ad Notice – privacy icons delivered with ads all across the Yahoo! network to give users control over customized advertising. We are continuing to improve these tools, are active in discussions on how to integrate browser-based Do-Not-Track tools into existing privacy models, and are working on even more consumer tools within Yahoo! products designed to put more control our users’ hands.  Privacy has always been a core value of this company.

Transparency with our users is the foundation of what builds trust. That’s why we are telling our users about these changes now, well ahead of when they go into effect. In the next 4-6 weeks we will begin rolling out notifications across Yahoo! to ensure that we have given clear and understandable notice to our consumers of this change in our policy.  Thirty days after we have completed these notifications, we will put the new policy into effect.  We expect this will occur sometime in mid-to-late July.

No policy exists in a vacuum and every company has to continually reevaluate what serves its consumers best over time. Changes like these are never undertaken lightly. We at Yahoo! are incredibly proud of the innovative new products we have launched and have lined up in the coming months for our users around the globe. We have a world-class research team using data to improve consumer experiences. We have a product team dedicated to innovative new products and features like Search Direct and Livestand.  And we remain one of the most visited and trusted sites in the world. We want to stay that way by putting our users’ data to work for them to make every visit to Yahoo! better than the last.

Anne Toth
Chief Trust Officer

en Español
en Français