At Yahoo! we are committed to earning and maintaining our users’ trust each and every day.   That is why we are thrilled today to be announcing a new consumer tool called Ad Interest Manager,  which takes transparency in online advertising to a new level for building user trust.

Ad Interest Manager is a central place where Yahoo! visitors can see a concise summary of their online activity and make easy, constructive choices about their exposure to interest-based advertising. Ad Interest Manager is also a continuation of our ongoing commitment to helping consumers get the information they want while protecting their privacy at the same time.

At Yahoo!, we believe that ads tailored to users’ interests make online experiences more compelling and user-focused. The new tool Yahoo! is launching today will show users what interests we think they have, and also let them edit and change those interests to reflect the most up–to-date information. Importantly, users who don’t want interest-based ads can turn them off completely. With the introduction of Ad Interest Manager, users can not only get a better understanding of how interest-based advertising works, but they can also communicate better with Yahoo! and our advertisers about what most interests them.

Yahoo! Ad Interest Manager is currently online in the U.S. and will be made available to European users in the coming weeks. Planned future enhancements to the Ad Interest Manager will also let users add categories of interest that Yahoo! may have missed.

Yahoo! was one of the first companies to implement a layered Privacy Center model more than eight years ago, which provides people with a central place to understand and control their options when it comes to the use of personal data. This is coupled with an industry-leading data-retention policy which strives to ensure that Yahoo! retains data only long enough to serve our business and create the highest quality user experiences while maintaining the ability to fight fraud, secure systems, and meet legal obligations.

To read more about Ad Interest Manager, please click here.

Today I testified before the House Energy & Commerce Committee at a hearing titled “Behavioral Advertising: Industry Practices and Consumers’ Expectations.” The Committee has been examining consumer privacy issues for Internet advertising and wants to understand what companies are doing to protect people.

In my remarks today (which you can find here – PDF), I conveyed Yahoo!’s long leadership on privacy matters and shared our comprehensive approach to this issue. We believe the best approach to user privacy is one that provides people with plenty of transparency, gives them a chance to opt-out of things they don’t want, and educates them about their choices, while also putting limits on how much information we hold and how long we it.

Last December we announced an industry-leading data retention policy, which the New York Times described as “…an encouraging development for the cause of Internet privacy.” We now hold your data in identifiable form for just 90 days (with some limited exceptions) — the shortest duration in the industry. And we apply it to the widest array of data, far outpacing our competitors.

Most people recognize and accept that online advertising fuels the largely free Internet economy. Their only caveat often is that if they do have advertising, they want to see ads that are relevant to their needs and interests — and I often hear from them when it’s not. We want every page on Yahoo! to be relevant and compelling both in terms of content and advertising. This marriage provides the best possible user experience and it is what Yahoo! is all about.

But we understand that not all users share the same views, so Yahoo! makes an opt out available. For most online advertising, we believe a good opt out paired with responsible data retention policies is the right default setting. It offers meaningful privacy protections while providing the best possible user experience. A good opt out needs to be prominent, readily accessible, clearly conveyed, and have options for persistency. Yahoo! has been working to ensure that our opt out is exactly that. Head to our Privacy Center for more on how to manage your preferences.

Privacy is at the core of our trusted relationship with more than 500 million users around the globe. In my more than 11 years of overseeing our policy decisions, I’ve learned that advances in consumer protection are most often driven by the industry and we hope that Congress will consider an approach that allows us to continue keeping pace with not only technology advances, but also your demands and expectations.

Anne Toth
VP Policy, Head of Privacy

Photo from kimberlyfaye

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

You love to travel. You recently researched hotels in Thailand online. You see an ad that features the latest fare discounts from your airport to Bangkok. You’re not sure how that happened, but it’s pretty great serendipity. Now you’re booked in 37A and looking forward to tasting a proper panang curry.

That’s one scenario that demonstrates how valuable online advertising can be when it’s customized to your personal interests. It’s the kind of relevant advertising that saves you time and money – travel discounts, coupons, retailer sales, etc.

But we know that kind of customized advertising isn’t everyone’s cup of tea (or bowl of curry).

That’s why we’re introducing a new privacy choice, giving you greater choice in how you manage your privacy online by letting you opt-out of customized advertising on Yahoo.com

We announced that new capability today in a letter to Congressman John Dingell (D – Mich.), the Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee that recently sent an inquiry to 33 companies about ad customization. You can read the full letter here. This new choice has been in the works for some time now, but we chose to move up our announcement so that we could share this information with Congress today.

It won’t take effect until the end of the month but you can opt out today by clicking on the “Privacy Policy” link at the bottom of virtually every page on the Yahoo.com network and look for the “Opt-Out” link in the sidebar.

Since most of Yahoo! is free, we know there’s not much preventing you from up and leaving us at any time. That’s why we work hard to earn your trust. And we think that comes with offering transparency and choice about the options available to you.

Anne Toth
Head of Privacy & VP – Policy