Your data goes incognito

Posted December 17th, 2008 at 6:41 am by Anne Toth, Privacy & Policy

 18 Comments / Filed in: Trends & News

At Yahoo!, data helps fuel the development of groundbreaking products for our users, partners and developers. We use all kinds of data for everything from powering innovative new products like Search Assist to showing you relevant news and information on our homepage to customizing advertising and content throughout Yahoo!’s network. We also analyze data to help fight the fraudsters that attack our systems.

Much of the data we use is information about our users’ online interests. The collection and use of that personal data demand that we take great care in managing and storing it. At Yahoo!, we feel a great responsibility to protect your privacy — we hold your trust sacred and work hard to earn it.

Today, we take another important step in our long record of privacy leadership. Last year, we committed to anonymizing the data we collect about your searches after 13 months. We are now reducing our retention time to 90 days with limited exceptions for fraud, security, and legal obligations. We’re also expanding our commitment to include data on page views, page clicks, ad views, and ad clicks.

What this means is that our content and advertising customization will remain cutting-edge and relevant to your interests — but the data we use to provide those services will only be kept for as long as we really need it.

How did we figure out “how long we really need it”? Led by my colleague Shane Wiley, the Insights Strategy Team worked with our business, product, and engineering teams around the globe to achieve the following goals:

• Meet the need for high quality consumer experience;
• Preserve the effectiveness of our advertising model and cutting-edge capabilities;
• Protect our users by fighting fraud and security threats; and
• Meet our legal obligations.

The result? We are setting a new industry benchmark by lowering the length of time we store non-anonymous data. Our new policy enables Yahoo! to continue providing the cutting-edge technologies and solutions advertisers and publishers expect while respecting your privacy.

Anne Toth
VP of Policy and Head of Privacy

Tagged: news, privacy

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18 Comments Add your own

alx | December 17th, 2008 at 9:49 am

wow yahoo is making some big moves lately hey anne this is great but does this also means when u delete a yahoo mail account after 90 days it wont be kept yahoo back up system forever i hope i can get real answer not the run around ppl will feel more safe that yahoo is stepping up to the plate cause these are nervous with there info being kept by company like google who keep the forever one suggestion anne be diffrent from google

Sarah | December 18th, 2008 at 7:02 pm

Hopefully Yahoo’s move will do more good than harm, but serious questions should be asked. Keeping a critical eye on their “bar-raising” is certain to point to their true motivations. There’s an interesting article here.

Robert | December 20th, 2008 at 9:26 am

Sorry i dont like the new home page, would like to go back to the old one. I have sent msg to help trying to mfind out how, i not very computer smart, and all i get is it is forward to someone else. That really sucks that you cantr talk to a tect and get things resolved. if i cant go back to the old one then i think i will send all my contacts to my other email and cancel my personel account and stop using yahoo mail all together it seamsw it aqll was takes 1 to 2 days to here from help i dont call or wright to help if i dont need it but when you need it it sucks that you cant talk to a person so would some one tell me how go back to the olds home page please.

Abhishek | January 9th, 2009 at 6:31 pm

thats really good step from Y! team

Wallpaper | April 14th, 2009 at 5:50 am

i really like the efforts of Yahoo, hope someda it will out beat Google :)

MK | May 24th, 2009 at 7:59 am

changes can be a good thing. But can I truly customize my homepage or filters. Or is it all based on Yahoo’s templates and wants? A little more creative freedom would be appreciated. Mk

sonia | May 25th, 2009 at 3:10 pm

salam

Helen Watzlawick | July 23rd, 2009 at 6:17 pm

I’m glad that most everyone is stepping up to the plate aren’t you guys? Sometimes people just don’t think just like me.I get so geared up about my blogging sometimes that I forget about the dangers of my identity being stolen.The fact that yahoo will be destroying data in sixty days is great.

narendra pratap | July 24th, 2009 at 12:42 pm

yes, keep improoving…,my all the best wishes…

bengt.andersson | August 1st, 2009 at 12:05 pm

Why colloborate with the fascists? Erase everything emediately. Only the ancestors of the paranoid F J Hoover will benefit from such a “benchmark”. Google and your partner Yahoo is nothing of a collaborator of the “gang of the four”; Bush, Chaney,Rumsfeld, Rice; war criminals, not more loveable and bin Laden, Kim Jung Il and the Burma generals. As far I have known nothing from Google has ever penetrated my computer – and ever will. Once Dillinger was the enemy of the state. Today undoubtley Google is. “1984″ and “Minority Report” is worthing wieving. Take a tranqulizeller not to pass out! We have just elected a representative for Sweden into the European Parlament (“the Pirate Party”) and this has inspired several other countries to reform their party structures to the new conditions. Our primier, Reinfeldt, has not understand this phenomenon and has so far acted as a medevial ruler (and he is supporting a system that is electronically searching all communication. “Acts on terrorism”, up our asses.) As the retarded W Bush said: either your our against our or against. How about Altavista?

Universumtech WebMarketing | August 27th, 2009 at 8:50 am

This is great news and it gives a secured feeling for most Yahoo users of their important data accessed on this site. Privacy of information is a major issue in the web and this action brings back trust on quality sites like Yahoo. Keep up the good work and more power to you!

Donna Petty | September 20th, 2009 at 2:23 pm

Please help me get on my yahoo email. I cannot get on it at all. 7365340.

the king | October 13th, 2009 at 1:36 am

love you

jigili | October 13th, 2009 at 8:38 am

salam khobi

patricia m mcandrew | October 18th, 2009 at 3:46 pm

I hope i canget into the new website of yahoo.I cannot read the old website because it is iinlimited space. i hope this time i spent trying to get into the new premier website works,

Jennie | October 27th, 2009 at 6:05 am

Yes I want to change my user name here at yahoo
how do I go about it?

Umbrella Stroller Mom | December 2nd, 2009 at 3:42 pm

Data privacy seems to be such a huge issue these days. Facebook put out a big notice today that they were overhauling how they do regional groups because of this very thing. A quick search pulls up this article and a number of others, but it seems that the major focus on this stuff has come about in the last few years. I don’t remember it being so big of a thing before this. I hope that all goes well in the push to make the web a more secure place to surf.

Alfred Amolacion | January 12th, 2010 at 11:07 am

Fantastic Experience
Thank you so much.