Yahoo will peel your emails to resell your profile for advertising purposes
Unlike Google, the messaging provider has decided to mass collect information in the emails of its users to establish their consumption profile. It will then be sold to advertisers.
More than a year ago, Google announced that it will no longer scan emails for advertising purposes. This has earned him some credibility in the protection of personal data. At Yahoo, however, it's the opposite. Not only does the provider continue to scan the emails of its users, it even makes it a hobbyhorse for advertisers.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Yahoo's parent company, Oath, recently explained to them that it would now scan the mailboxes of 200 million users for product cravings. This collection of information - which also concerns AOL Mail - makes it possible to catalog these users in various consumer profiles, such as "frequent flyer", "investor", "car owner", "independent", etc. A cookie is then deposited on their computers which will allow advertisers to track them during their travels on the Web, to know their consumption profiles and to offer them a suitable advertisement.
Trash accounts that are worth gold
Yahoo explains that it does not scan personal messages but only commercial emails: invoices, tickets, rental confirmations, travel itineraries, promotional messages, spam, etc. That's good, because these are the most interesting messages at the level of tracking advertising. Knowing that a user has ordered a particular product from an e-commerce site is worth gold in this type of business.
It must be said that Yahoo also benefits from a particular position in the market. The leaders of Oath have indeed confessed that many users make their Yahoo address a receptacle for commercial emails, especially those that are not solicited. In other words, Yahoo addresses are often trash addresses. It may not be very glorious, but it is an advantage in terms of advertising targeting.
Fortunately, it is possible to disable this tracking. If you start from your account, it's an obstacle course. We will immediately give you the shortcut to get there. You must first log in, then open the "Ad Interest Manager" page in another tab. This will allow you to disable the "personalization" of advertisements, i.e. tracking. It will be enough to click on "Opt out" ... hoping that it works.
