Yahoo First Website to Display New Industry Privacy Icon
Yahoo has become the first website to show the new standard privacy icon on targeted ads across its site. This forms a key part of Yahoo's Ad Choices initiative to "increase transparency between consumers, websites and advertisers".
Developed by the digital industry and led by the Internet Advertising Bureau, the triangular icon has been created in response to the revised EU privacy directive.
Yahoo users will now see a link to Ad Choices on their mail log-in page. The privacy icon opens a page listing the companies connected with the ads users see on Yahoo pages and provides information about how the ad has been served and targeted. Users are then given the opportunity to opt-out of receiving any ads they don't like.
Senior Director of International Privacy and Policy at Yahoo, Justin B Weiss, gave a statement saying: "Businesses like ours depend on the trust of our users and Yahoo's goal is to ensure that interest-based advertising, which benefits both consumers and advertisers, becomes familiar practice both within the industry and among web surfers themselves."
Yahoo has also said: "Our overriding goal is for the Ad Choices initiative to become standardised across the EU. We are teaming up with industry bodies, key advertisers, publishers and agencies to ensure that the necessary steps are being taken to make this happen."