Something that Andy just brought to my attention: Yahoo Web Beacons have got some people up in arms because they mean Yahoo can track their users outside the Yahoo webspace. Reading through their own statement it implies that it only works on sites that have beacons on their sites, so if, say, Amazon have a Yahoo beacon then Yahoo will know how often you go to Amazon. They won’t know how often you come to this site because I don’t have a beacon. They also put them in HTML emails they send out to tell whether they’re opened, etc.
The beacons work in the same way the tracker on this page works – it’s basically a small graphic that, when loaded, tells Yahoo who it is and where it is. Yahoo then puts this information along with the other information it has about you and builds a profile.
Basically it’s an information sharing exercise centred around Yahoo for marketing purposes, similar to that reward card (the name escapes me) shared by a number of department stores and supermarkets. This stuff goes on anyway – that Yahoo are being slightly open about it is almost refreshing, though it doesn’t make it a good thing.
The main problem I have with this is it’s an opt-out thing. Otherwise it’s just another marketing annoyance. Compared with the waves of spam I get already it’s just a dip in the ocean really. I’m going to opt-out though.