Yahoo Gets Away With Privacy Switch
The New York Times reports on data released by comScore on Yahoo�s privacy switcheroo. The data shows that Yahoo's changes got users' attention. In the four weeks from March 25 to April 21, nearly a million Internet users in the United States looked at Yahoo's new privacy policy (privacy.yahoo.com/privacy/us/ ). That figure represents 1 percent of Internet users in the United States and was up sharply from the preceding four weeks, when only 0.3 percent of Yahoo users read its privacy policy. Slightly more people, 1.1 million, visited the page Yahoo had set up where users could "opt out" by telling the site not to send e-mail or other messages (subscribe.yahoo .com/showaccount). That page did not exist before the portal's policy change. But only 73,000 users, comScore projects, considered ending their relationship with Yahoo by visiting the page (https://edit.yahoo.com /config/delete-user ) that actually cancels their Yahoo accounts, which can include e-mail and other services. That was fewer, even, than the month before, when 114,000 users went to the page. (ComScore is unable to tell if the visitors to the page actually do push the button to close out their Yahoo accounts.) The Yahoo Privacy Storm That Wasn't
New York Times, May 13, 2002
comScore
