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Yahoo Copies Google, Causes Privacy Concerns

After the release of the SmartAds platform

By Bogdan Popa, Security and Search Engines Editor

4th of July 2007, 13:14 GMT

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Yahoo recently released a new advertising platform, SmartAds that is regarded as the most competitive product for Google's services. Although the Mountain View company didn't say a thing about this new release, some other firms raised privacy concerns just like the case which involved Google after the search giant acquired DoubleClick. As you might know, several companies including Microsoft demanded the regulators to investigate

the acquisition because it might infringe the antitrust laws.

According to ABC News, Paul Stephens from the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse said that Yahoo's SmartAds might represent a threat for the Internet users because the solution may store an important amount of information about the registered members.

"I absolutely believe it is a threat to privacy. SmartAds is disconcerting because it's compiling all sorts of information about you, things that you may have done a year ago on a Yahoo site, that you may have completely forgotten about," Paul Stephens said for ABC News. "There's no reason that this would create any additional security concern. He often overlook that advertising and marketing really do serve consumers. It's not some kind of trickery," Solveig Singleton, a senior adjunct fellow at the Progress and Freedom Foundation, added for the same source.

As you might know, the search giant Google was accused by the European Union that some of its products are not offering the users' privacy as they should. Because the Google officials were somehow outraged by this accusation, the company struggled to repair its image and improve the privacy. First of all, it reduced the period for anonymizing the users' logs from 24 months to only 18 months. However, the original period is kept in certain countries with specific laws.

Also, Google rolled out a special blog to keep the consumers up to date with the latest Google efforts in the privacy domain.

TAGS:

yahoo | google | smartads

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