How Yahoo shares your personal data
By Shalini Singh

When you logon to Yahoo or Google to check out the news, network or blog, there is a reasonable expectation of privacy.  After all, when you first logged on to Yahoo, its terms of service assured you that it does not share your data with third parties.  While most websites like Yahoo do not share your data with third parties, it is given to hundreds of affiliates. 

And it is perfectly legal.  An affiliate could be another website or even a business house. The terms of service that you accept say no to ‘Third parties’  but yes to ‘Affiliates’.  While legally they may be separate entities,  in the practical world any third party can pay a fee and become an affiliate.

Every major website in the world develops software known as ‘Web Bugs’ which tracks which country you are from,  which computer you use,  what do you watch and even what you buy.  Advertisers spend billions of dollars based on this information.

3 graduates of The University of California’s Berkeley School of Information have just published their research in KnowPrivacy.org showing the magnitude of this privacy breach.  Their research found that websites collect and analyze data about users, but only offer partial access and control to the users.  And that most website policies are unclear about several important issues, such as retention and data enhancement.
 
The top 10 websites in USA are 1) Google 2) Yahoo 3) MSN 4) Windows Live 5) YouTube 6) Wikipedia 7) Microsoft 8) Myspace 9) Facebook 10) Ebay

Google, which is ranked the No. 1 site, has 44 ‘Web Bugs’ on its websites monitoring what you do.  Google has 137 business affiliates with whom such data is shared.

Yahoo has 27 Web Bugs which feed your data to 113 affiliates.

Heck, even the non profit ‘Encyclopedia which anyone can edit’ Wikipedia monitors user behaviour.  Wikipedia which is the 6th most popular website in USA has 1 Web Bug monitoring you and such information is shared with 12 affiliates.

Not all popular websites sell your viewing habits to advertisers for cash.  Facebook, which is the 9th most popular website in USA) has 15 ‘Web Bugs’ but no affiliates.

And which were the sites with the most ‘Web Bugs’  which track your behaviour once you log on?  Blogs were the most monitored.  Blogspot.com had 100 Web Bugs, Typepad.com had 75, Google.com had 44, Blogger.com had 31 and MSN has 29.Web Bugs.

Till each major website lets its users know how their personal data is shared and for what price,  one can only speculate on the seriousness of this privacy breach.