How to get yahoo to speak to me

May 22, 2018 5:37 PM

On signing into a yahoo email account yesterday, I was invited to see and customise which advertising partners can see and use my data, now that yahoo is part of Oath. The 'Other partners' list includes, by my count, 273 options to unselect, running from 'Adsupply' to 'Zygon', with more options appearing under 'IAB partners'. All are pre-checked 'yes'. I don't see an option to change these globally.

This is probably futile, but on a sort of point of principle...

I have no desire for any of these entities to have my data. I could go through all these and change them individually. I was wondering:
- is there some global setting somewhere that I'm missing?
- if not, and given that I think requiring a user to manually alter hundreds of settings is unreasonable, is there a contact method to yahoo that I can ask/complain about this? @YahooCare hasn't responded as yet. The webforms I can find either aren't apprioriate, or lead to error messages. I can't find an actual email address for support?

FWIW, I am in the EU, and am aware that some of my options might change next week when GDPR comes into force. This is more about, how to actually communicate with yahoo and get a response.

posted by wilko to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

Best answer: They have a feedback form on their privacy centre. This is your opportunity to contact them to ask for them to restrict or erase the data they are processing. If you cannot contact them to discuss privacy this is an issue. I would take a screen grab of error you've encountered. Then I would make a data subject rights request asking what data they have and the right to erase. They must respond to your request in 30 calendar days. You can also complain about their consent process which is not in line with the requirements of the Regulation. When they don't respond, I would contact the local supervisory authority.

It's really not on to have 273 odd options which you must opt out of. Consent must be opt in, a real choice and not segmented this this degree. I would get a screen shot with the intention of complaining to my local supervisory authority e.g the ICO if you're in the UK.

Really this is so poor on so many levels. I will be doing the above steps myself come Friday. I've been so busy getting ready for GDPR at work I haven't had a chance to review all the privacy and consent emails coming through to my personal inbox the last week. Thanks for highlighting this one. I've seen a lot of things I could nit pick but let slide. This however is pretty egregious.
posted by BAKERSFIELD! at 11:13 PM on May 22, 2018

Thanks for posting this question. I am still clicking "later" on the dang Oath.
posted by Lesser Shrew at 7:41 AM on May 23, 2018

Response by poster: Fwiw, I asked on twitter how to complain and how to contact their data controller, the reply was just to ring their 0800 support number, which I haven't yet done.
posted by wilko at 3:29 PM on May 23, 2018

Hey folks! I'm a Yahoo employee working on GDPR software.

Sorry for the bad experience. Since your last post, our consent page now deselects partners by default when you visit one of the detailed partner selection screens during consent. You can still enable partners selectively and there's an option to Select and Deselect All partners.

Let me know what you think. If you have any concerns, feel free to send me a message. I'll be glad to help.
posted by airwalk at 4:32 PM on May 25, 2018

Good to see a response from Yahoo here on Ask.

Just a comment on your follow up attempt to contact via twitter. When making a rights request companies cannot require people to communicate via specified channels or forms. You have the right to make requests via social media, or however you want. Phone. Email. Letter. Even F2F or ... as airwalk has offered memail.

For Yahoo, it would be sensible to fix up the privacy contact centre pronto to ensure queries are directed to the right people internally. The next port of call for people is their supervisory authority. As you saw from my earlier comment it’s best to give people the chance to get in touch with you first before it escalates. There’s no need for this to go to 11.

It’s good that Yahoo have switched to opt in. I’m of two minds about the 273 partners. This is a lot, but I’m minded to take it Yahoo is just being much more honest and transparent than others in the same industry who are sharing our data with lord knows who.
posted by BAKERSFIELD! at 1:53 PM on May 26, 2018

If you'd like to contact Oath about privacy policy concerns, your best bet is to visit the privacy policy link on the Oath website you're visiting. You'll find ways to give feedback and contact Oath Customer Care and Oath's Data Protection Officer. As of this writing, you'll find this under the "Questions & suggestions" section.

Yes, the intent is to be transparent and helpful. Thanks!

I work as a software engineer, not a policy expert, so I'm unable to comment on the other parts of your post which relate to policy more generally. If you have any specific concerns about policy, I'd direct you to the above contacts.
posted by airwalk at 4:56 PM on May 31, 2018