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HOW TO Opt Out of Google and Yahoo Targeting Your Surf Habits

Congress is starting to examine the state of internet surviellence of citizens using the internet. Companies like Google and Yahoo have been monitoring their visitors surfing habits and are trying to match ads that suit the individual.

Google and Yahoo have announced a way to ‘opt out’ of their ‘ad matching’ technology. The method is to place a cookie in your webbrowser that some how tells them to stop spying on you.

Example of the yahoo.com cookie:

Name: AO
Content: o=1
Domain: .yahoo.com
Path: /
Name: B
Content: 2u2or344a8jbg&b=3&s=hu
Domain: .yahoo.com
Path: /

Yahoo Opt Out Procedure:

When possible, we try to match the ads that we show you to your interests. We call this “ad matching,” (sometimes also called ad customization) and we do this in order to make the ads you see more relevant and useful for you. Ad matching uses data about your visits to both Yahoo! and our partner sites and about the ads you view and click.

Opt Out of Yahoo – Click Me

Google Opt Out Procedure:

Google uses cookies to serve more relevant ads. Learn more about how Google uses advertising cookies.

Anyone may opt out of the DoubleClick cookie (for both the Google content network and DoubleClick ad serving) at any time by clicking the button above. In addition, Google allows third party advertisers to serve ads on the Google content network. Using a tool created by the Network Advertising Initiative, you can opt out of several third party ad servers’ and networks’ cookies simultaneously. (Google also uses cookies for Google Analytics and conversion tracking. Read more about this in our FAQ below.)

Conclusion

Is this the best solution to prevent Yahoo and Google from tracking your serving habits? Probably not. I recommend that you use a freeware utility for Windows called “Hostman“. You can effectively block cookies and malicious domains by blocking them via your HOSTS file.

Additionally, for Firefox browser users, using AdBlock Plus and NoScript extensions to ensure additionally privacy protections.

Written by admin on August 14th, 2008 with comments disabled.
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