I post this for my friends in the winemaking NG. I found it inmportant and you may too. Forgive the the OT post.....
For those of you who have Yahoo accounts or belong to any of the Yahoo groups, here is some information that you may find helpful regarding Yahoo's efforts to track your web activities.
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:
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.
Here is the Yahoo Policy:
Web Beacons
Web pages may contain an electronic file called a web beacon, that allows a web site to count users who have visited that page or to access certain cookies. Yahoo! uses web beacons in the following ways:
Within the Yahoo! Network
Yahoo! uses web beacons within the Yahoo! network of web sites in order to count users and to recognize users by accessing Yahoo! cookies. Being able to access Yahoo! cookies allows us to personalize your experience when you visit Yahoo! web sites that are located both on and off of the yahoo.com domain. For example, Yahoo! GeoCities pages are mostly located on the geocities.com domain. Outside the Yahoo! Network
Yahoo! uses web beacons to conduct research on behalf of certain partners on their web sites and also for auditing purposes. Information recorded through these web beacons is used to report aggregate information about Yahoo! users to our partners. This aggregate information may include demographic and usage information. No personally identifiable information about you is shared with partners from this research. When conducting research Yahoo!'s practice is to require our partners to disclose the presence of these web beacons on their pages in their privacy policies and state what choices are available to users regarding the collection and use of this information. You may choose to opt-out of Yahoo! using this information for this research. Please click here to opt-out. 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.
HTML Mail
Yahoo!'s practice is to include web beacons in HTML-formatted email messages (messages that include graphics) that Yahoo!, or its agents, sends in order to determine which email messages were opened and to note whether a message was acted upon. In general, any file served as part of a web page, including an ad banner, can act as a web beacon. Yahoo! may also include web beacons from other companies within pages served by Yahoo! so that Yahoo!'s advertisers may receive auditing, research and reporting.