Something to watch out for if you are a user of any of Yahoo’s services.

Yahoo tracks all of its users everywhere on the web and the way to opt-out is detailed below. If you have a Yahoo e-mail account or belong to one of Yahoo’s many Yahoo groups, this probably applies to you. Yahoo has probably been tracking everything you do online. Follow the instructions precisely to opt out of this. Notice the important part at the very end.

“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:

http://privacy.yahoo.com/privacy

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.

http://privacy.yahoo.com/privacy/us/beacons/details.html

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. So don’t reflexively click that button, or you will undo the opt-out ! Feel free to forward this to other groups.”