s Spams Spam
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"Yahoo! will not sell or rent your personally identifiable information to anyone. Yahoo! may send personally identifiable information about you to other companies or people when ... we have your consent to share the information ..." - Yahoo Privacy Policy, November 2001 |
Ha! Ha! Just kidding! - Yahoo Privacy Policy, March 2002 |
In March 2002, Yahoo announced a new privacy policy. Unfortunately, the announcement neglected to mention a few tiny things.
It failed to mention that all privacy preferences have been reset. It neglected to reveal that all Yahoo users had been signed up for all categories of marketing promotions. It didn't say that this includes not just email spam, but also postal junk mail and even telemarketing phone calls to your home.
Most people found out about the new Yahoo Spam Policy on the net or from friends. Needless to say, the response was not too positive.
This web page collects information on the new Yahoo Spam Policy, and the response to it.
Yahoo is a member of Truste, an
industry consortium that reviews privacy statements for web sites. A web
site is awarded the Truste badge (shown at right) when their
privacy policy has been audited and approved, and they agree that they
will adhere to it. (This site is not a Truste member!
The badge is displayed only for illustration purposes.)
When a member fails to honor its posted policy, Truste is charged with responding to the violation. In practice, unless the member has stopped paying their dues, it rarely takes action. So, theoretically, Truste ought to be pursuing Yahoo over the violation to its previously approved privacy policies. Unfortunately--but expectedly--it is declining to do so.
Chip Rosenthal
Home to Unicom Systems Development.
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