Thanks for the headsup!

Thanks for the info Uncle Willy! We alway appreciate the heads up on people trying to butt into our business.

Patchy

Whoa!

It's bad enough that my grocery store is tracking my purchases, isn't anyplace safe?

Thanks for the heads up, Wil!

Owen

I'm getting really tired of folks being all that interested in what I look at online. I'm not a demographic.

How's the hair holding up, by the way, Wil?

Thanks for the heads up! Big brother bastards. Isn't this microchip in my neck ENOUGH????

Yeah, i agree wil. Society is on a downward trend towards zero privacy. I dont like it one bit.

*****************************************************
Did you guys notice that the opt-out thing only works for one particular browser/computer? It doesn't go by user... so if you use more than one broswer or computer, make sure you opt out for all of them!!!
******************************************************

Every one is trying to find out what we do all day, my question is what do this companies do all day? I mean track millions of people as they surf the web and type out emails?

I'm having trouble finding what you're talking about, Wil...(at the risk of sounding stupid)is this when one uses Yahoo as a search engine? If so, I just looked and couldn't find it. : (

Hope I'm not being snooped on...

Take care,

Wil Wheaton: Man of the People. Elect to Full Ensign in '89.

I don't smell all that great anyway. Why do they keep sniffing me?

Thanks Unca.

Thank you very much for the warning! Looks like "Big Brother" is rearing his head more and more frequently.

Looks like it's a cookie access thing... the question is, if you delete your cookies does it start all over again? What about browsers like Netscape that can be set to delete cookies on exit or to not allow access to cookies or to block cookies all together?

Grrr, snarl, froth et cetera.

It's not so much what I might be browsing (though I'm half tempted to run up a little bandwidth browsing, oh I don't know, sheep-breeding websites just the blow their demographic) it's the principle of the thing.

Thanks for the heads-up on this one. Remember kids, 2003 if "Informational Hygeine" year!

That stuff concerns me but....
how do they filter the sheer volume of info that comes in. Even the NSA, which is the biggest brother in the world, cant cope with the amount of intel they recieve.

That stuff concerns me but....
how do they filter the sheer volume of info that comes in. Even the NSA, which is the biggest brother in the world, cant cope with the amount of intel they recieve.

Ahhh, the fun of 'living' online. *snarl, mumble, grumble, froth*

Thank Unlce Willy for the heads up! :)

you can just click here: http://pclick.yahoo.com/p?optout to opt out

hm. would be so easy to make that a redirect-url on some pages...like, go to WWDN and it spawns a new window that sends you to that url...they didn't think the opt-out method through very well.

I blame the Libertarians

Thanks so much for the heads-up! I don't think I would have ever known about that had I not read your site.... Which actually leaves me feeling seriously queasy.

Thanks again!

Thanks Wil.

Note that you have to opt-out for each *browser* you use.
Evil.

As some people know, I run a cybercafe.

The sort of thing that Yahoo is doing just burns my butt. Isn't it enough that I have to run @#~%$! antivirus, AD-Aware and a customs hosts file to stop snooping, now I have to put up with those farkin yahoos.

I have hated Yahoo with a passion for about 4 years when they decided that I was a minor BECAUSE I DON'T HAVE A CREDIT CARD to prove otherwise. Assholes. So, what did they do? Cancelled my yahoo account in the name of protecting CHILDREN. And, do you think that they responded to ANY of my emails protesting this? NO.

Also, WHAT THE HELL DOES A CREDIT CARD have to do with your AGE?

Scumbags. Freaks. Goofs. Bastards. Anyone care to add to my list of epithets, feel free!

Grrrrrrr

'Behind Winston's back the voice from the telescreen was still babbling away about pig-iron and the overfulfilment of the Ninth Three-Year Plan. The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it, moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live -- did live, from habit that became instinct -- in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.'

Sorry to be a paragraph hog, just thought a little excerpt from "1984" would be appropriate here. Looks like Orwell was about 20 years off...

Thank you Wil! I was OK when Yahoo swallowed my ISP (Prodigy), but now I'm seriously rethinking my decision to stay with them. In the meantime I'll opt out of their snoop program. Goddamn bastards.

Bastards!
I *almost* pressed the "cancel opt-out" button, even if I knew to look for it! }8-(

Thanks for the heads up

Yeah, Web Beacons are also part of MSN's terms of service as well, but oh, I could go on for a long, long time about MSN's Privacy Evils.

On another note, not as creepy, Wil if you don't know about this, tell your readers:

http://www.musiccdsettlement.com/english/default.htm7

Sign up, all those that bought CDs between then and now.

Thanks Wil...I haven't checked the privacy policy recently. I should do that more often.

Thanks much!!

Thanks Wil
That cancel option was quite sneaky, thats the way most sites put there 'return' to the previous screen button, I almost clicked the darn thing out of reflex! Then I remembered what you said!

Those lousy rat bastards!
Thanks Wil.
That kind of sneaky stuff they are pulling just annoys me to no end.

Thanks for the tip, Wil.

This has been said before, but I'm repeating it anyway:

***you have to opt-out for each browser you use***

I remember them doing something like this a couple of years ago when they first aquired egroups.com
ty wil for telling me they are doing it again.

I hate yahoo with a passion. and what was behind their decision to get rid of the frames in yahoo mail?

All the more reason to use Google. :D

actually I noticed I was opt-out'd already. So if you did the Opt-out thing about 3 years ago then your fine.
This isnt new for yahoogroups. They're still mean.

The way I read this is that if you don't accept HTML mail from them (and HTML in mail is an abomination) they can't track you anyway.

Thanks for passing that on, Wil.

My school can't hurry up fast enough in getting its own server so we don't need Yahoo for our teacher accounts anymore...

It's not just "sneaky."

Malevolent, perverse, par for the course.

All you fuckers, young and old, black and white, male and female, conservative and neo-conservative, need to understand that we are at fucking war.

I am not joking.

The corporations are slowly, methodically, inexorably eliminating every avenue of egress. Your government is no longer yours. It's not about whether you have to endure commercials on your Tivo-ed copy of "American Idol" or whether Yahoo spams your mail account.

Enterprise? Two Towers? NFL? Buffy?

Fuck that and fuck you.

Your children are going to demand an account of what you were doing in those critical years when all global information fell under the control of a half dozen corporations.

hey if your kids want an account of what you were doing, they better have a subpoena.

Thanks, Wil. My husband doesn't care as much about what I do online as Yahoo apparently does. Bastards.

Very useful, thanks much!

This is nothing new. Every major web site has been doing this ever since cookies were invented. Yahoo is just one of the first to let you opt-out.

Bastards.

Thanks, Wil!

*Dons tin hat*

Thank-god for not using Yahoo.

*Starts lift down to bunker*

See you in a few years...

Thanks Wil,

This is probably the 3rd time since I've had to go in and "fix" my privacy options with Yahoo. I like how they create new options and opt us in without letting us know...

-Jocelyn

Uncle Willy may know all, but Yahoo deserves to know Jack Shit about what I do on my computer. Can you say invasion of privacy?

**MUCHO** thanks for this heads up... cripes, you should have to pt in for total crap, dontcha think?

Thanks for the tip, Wil.

Damn,
the porn was my own...
I mean, thanks for the tip :)

I heart you Uncle Willie. :) Thank you so much for the heads up on thos bastards.

I'm also glad you liked the photoshop we did last night.

I was watching the Screensavers today and boy, the ladies love you Uncle Willie. Nemesis won the BMWNSBWWWII award (Best Movie We'll Never See Because Wil Wheaton Wasn't In It) from Megan and Morgan. Boy, without you, the ladies just don't like Star Trek...

Don't forget that if you use IE it makes a complete copy of most pages you visit, and stores them in a hidden cache that you can't see, delete, or anything. Also, if you use MS word it makes a complete copy of EVERY SINGLE FILE on your ENTIRE filesystem, when you delete a file, guess what, you only deleted the copy you knew about, wonder how you ended up with so little space? and guess what, if you run XP they built in their own little back door in so they could access these hidden files (and anything else about your computer. Oh joy!

Scary enough, I heard this about yahoo last summer. I wonder if they are re-doing their "volunteers" for this option :(
I haven't even checked to see if they turned this option back on. Im slowly moving over to myway.com for my free email :/

Thanks Wil, I hipped my list members to this "update."

Thanks Wil...I appreciate the warning and instructions to opt out.

Rick

Hoo boy! http://slashdot.org/~CleverNickName/journal/21350

Thanks, Wil. This Yahoo user has duly opted out!

Thank you, thanks, and thank you again. I hate that shit. What would we all do without you? I think I'll look around for a new free email account.

I also saw The Screensavers tonight and agree with Morgan and Megan's BMWNSBWWWII award for Nemesis. I did go see it but it seriously took a nose dive after the opening scene at the banquet. I went through Wesley withdrawal.

I don't use Yahoo very much, but I do appreciate the heads up.

Your message board blocked out my comment that was in the pointy brackets .
I'll try again:
What would we all do without you? {~shudder~}
; )

I thought I opted out a while ago. Did something change? I belong to some yahoo email groups and recently they started arriving with attached ads in addition to the embedded text ads. Maybe that's what changed. The ads can have beacons, too.

And yeah, I think they must store the opt-out in a cookie and that's why you have to do it for each browser on every computer. The opt-out doesn't ask for an email address or anything. You think they're snooping out your IP address and storing it somewhere? Not! I bet if you delete cookies, as I do, you've just lost your opt-out indicator. What do you think?

Thanks Wil! Appreciate the heads up. This is typical BS from all the major web "services". They do this so that they can find ways to make money since all of the "advertising" is pretty much a dry cow. With all the pop-up stoppers and cookie killers and things running around, it's difficult for large corporations to make any money on any click-thru advertising.

This of course does not give any of these so called "portal services" the right to snoop into peoples' business. Especially since there are many many many people out there that connect to their own corporate websites as part of their job. This oftem makes me wonder, for corporations that do not use VPNs or things of that nature, how they manage to keep trade secrets and
"top secret" information so well protected. Of course, I'm not so sure about the ability of these beacons to actually retrieve such information, but the only thing a good hacker needs is an IP address. And you know as well as I do, that national governments and large corporations all over the world do quite regulary employ "skilled hackers", and call them "security professionals". But we, the rest of Internet society, do not see and usually are not allowed to see what these "scurity" folks actually do for the companies and governments they work for. We only know what we are told, which is, I'm sorry to say, quite often the opposite of the truth.
Of course, I don't have anything against hackers...

As far as Yahoo is concerned, I have 4 email accounts over there, and I only use them to sign up for the occasional newsletter or online game site, or just as general spam catchers. I've been quite fortunate in that my own personal email address rarely gets spammed, maybe one piece of junk a month. I figure, why drive my SysAd insane when I can let Yahoo's servers deal with the trash? ;}

Im a little surprised this post wasnt in"LARGE WARNING CAP'S"!!!!

Yahoo...."RAT BASTARDS"!!!!

>^..^

Thanks for the update. There's no fee lunch. Ever!
The Internet is a major player in today's entertainment market.
Radio and TV media use rating numbers like Neilson ratings to justify advertising rates. I think this is similar. Running a website costs too (Webmasters, communications, computers).
This sounds like a way to determine demographics of users. Perhaps there are sinister motives. If you are a conspiracy theorists then you KNOW they have sinister motives! They want you to part with your money by using the products of their advertisers. At least they give you the change to opt out. I wonder if I can opt out of the Neilson rating?

I was going to say "Thanks for the heads up" and all that, but everyone else already has. So I'll just simply say "Ditto for me, too." Someone's keeping an eye out for us, and I'm glad it's Wil Wheaton ^-^

Just like in "Minority Report" -- they're tracking you.

thanks for the info

Thanks for the advice! :)
I'm passing the information to my readers here in **Brazil**...
The brazilian version of Yahoo! also has this 'web beacons' but they didn't annouce any changes in the privacy policy (the US site has a red "updated" sign along the link).

-------------------
Conciliábulo (in portuguese)
www.paulinhakz.blig.com.br

Thank you for the person who took the time to write this. As it should be not yahoo's business but our own.

Again thank you

Thank you. I have let folks on my Yahoo Groups and some other popular message boards know about this.

Another reason to use Google (google.com).
I only use Yahoo for maps, anyway (broadband wireless availability lookups)

Thanks for the heads up, I have a group there. Ill tell the other ppl I know who have one (or more). THANKS.

Thanks for the heads up. I got the msg indirectly via Jenny The Shifted Librarian ( "http://www.theshiftedlibrarian.com/2003/01/14.html#a3407 ). and have posted a note about it on my site and also refered the reader here.

http://PrivacyDigest.com/ Daily news from the privacy front.

*Higly Likly*

If i write:
droop bomb in USA

(I seriosly dont mean that It is just a exampel)
First the computers at NSA that filters thru internet will catch the prase " droop bomb in USA"
then some agent will look at it to decide where does the msg come from, look up user etc ect
and conclude if it is high risk or low risk.

If this stops crazy/fannatic people ,i can live with it but the sad truth is that crazy people are not stupid.

marre

Hey Wil

Thanks for letting us know. My in-laws use yahoo, so I'm going to let them know as well.

Eldon

I don"t believe it. A trusted company like Yahoo! doing something like that. I'm not biting. This must be a hoax. (sarcasim)

Ta Wil!!

Thanks for letting us know

Mike

Thanks for the info and the link. I did almost click the 'undo', thanks for the warning! And thanks for the reminder about 'all browsers, all comouters'
Yahoo didn't make it simple! GRRRRRRRRRRRR

Lynn

Thanks, Wil. =o)

Yahoo fucking blows. I stopped putting up with their garbage months ago.

What I find odd is that if I go to that link and click "opt out" it says it was successful, but I'm not logged into yahoo, so how do they know WHO opted out? (just wondering outloud.) I mean, I have a couple yahoo accounts, so wouldn't I have to opt out for each one? Makes me wonder if that "successful" page is just a dummy.

*mutters to self* Damn Yahell and it's Big Brother-ly ways...
Thanks for passing this along, Wil. I use Yahoo quite frequently these days so I appreciate the heads up.

Thanks for the warning. I was wondering why some of the junk mail I was getting had both my first name AND my last name in the subject line. And why am I getting all this crap from those matchmaker services? I am a married woman, for goodness sakes. I don't surf for guys! Gotta get a new e-mail I think.

This is the first time I am posting but I must say this seems weird to me. Its bad enough I am at the military recruitment age and have the marines tracking me to what ever universities I move too, but to have yahoo tracking my interenet usage. Thats just crazy.

Thank you, Wil! I had no idea Yahoo was up to that, nor did I care too much. It'd probably be a good idea for me to ditch their "snooping" since I casually do things that would make certain industries want to hunt me down, mainly the music one.

Thanks Wil, yahoo's going down the tubes man.

Chad B.

Thanks, I just used the opt out button. I am sick of snoops on and off the net :-)

Man, they tried to do something similar to this a year or two ago and I chose not to let them track me. I bet you anything this is part of that sting operation to catch people accessing child porn. I think that anytime they change something in the user agreement they should have to email you and let you know. This sort of thing pisses me off almost as much as those calls you get that are from a machine trying to get you to buy something.
Thanks for the heads up!

Hah, I love how they call them "web beacons". Of course in the real world, these things are called "web bugs" -- because an invisible 1x1 gif isn't exactly a bright shining visible light.

HI WIL. I JUST WANT TO SAY I THINK YOU ARE GREAT. PLEASE EMAIL ME BACK IT WOULD MAKE MY DAY. LOVE U ALWAYS, KELLY.

seitensprung kontakt under
http://seitensprung-kontakt.mt-forum.com/