Imagine my surprise when I logged into a ymail account that is TOTALLY separate from this blog and saw blog posts going back to Dec 6, 2008 in someone else’s Yahoo account.
I log into lots of other people’s email and AdWords advertising accounts and that causes some serious problems.
Did you know that if you log out of one Google account and do not log into another Google account that everything you do is placed in the Google history of the account you were last logged into?
Consultants could end up with some serious client issues if they
do searches for one client that end up in the history of another.
You can clear Google Search History but is it REALLY cleared?
The screen capture below shows the page in that Yahoo account that appears when I went straight to mail.yahoo.com – that account has this page but other ymail accounts I checked do not so this could be something new they’re testing or rolling out OR it could be some setting.
- Yahoo Updates Section – Click to see Full Size
I would definitely NOT choose any setting that would add content from unrelated blogs into any Yahoo! email account so either that is the default OR they will claim it was a computer glitch. I found settings in Contacts toturn off Share My Updates and See Updates in Yahoo! Mail (screen capture below).
It pulled Melissa from a reply made from that email account to someone in a Yahoo! Group so this thing automatically accumulates your activities in whatever Yahoo! can track. This updates feed also included reviews I wrote as GrowMap on Yahoo Local. I am turning this off in every account.
If you don’t want to be tracked everywhere everywhere you go, I would turn it off – but realize that it probably doesn’t actually stop them from storing all this information. All it does is make it less publicly available to you and other Internet users.
UPDATE: Just how bad is this situation? This just in about Yahoo Data Mining and sharing that data with Google and YouTube from a trackback on this post:
I was in a dialogue with a distant relative via email. This relative had not seen or heard from me in 20 years. I temporarily forgot where I was during our email exchange [which was on Yahoo.com email ] and told her my age.
Within 48 hours my age appeared in my Youtube.com channel, without my consent, without my permission and without me even knowing it until I logged and found it posted. I quickly deduced where this information had been datamined from. Someone from Yahoo.com had provided it to Google, which owns Youtube and it appeared in my Youtube account so quickly I was stunned. And furious too.
I need to warn all readers and subscribers not to EVER discuss anything of a private or confidential nature on yahoo.com email. Your emails are being archived, examined and harvested for details about you with each send.
I have been telling trusted people for many years there is only ONE BORG and Microsoft / Bing, Google, Yahoo!, Facebook, Twitter are all part of it and they all SHARE DATA. Even the wise people I know have trouble believing that, so you have to pay attention to the patterns!
Any company that is suddenly mentioned – as Twitter was – on the same day across every Major Media site – is part of that Borg. No PR agency is so good they can get your company mentioned ON THE SAME DAY on the late night news on EVERY CHANNEL, in the soap opera episodes that day, on the prime time shows, the reality shows and even OPRAH – all on the same day.
Wake up, people. Stop rationalizing so you can ignore the obvious!
