Yahoo Scanning Emails And Selling Data To Advertisers

 Yahoo has become one of the best email services and it comes with outstanding features. Yahoo is scanning emails of people for information to sell to the advertisers, as per a report in The Wall Street Journal. The technical massive scans more than 200 million Yahoo Mail inboxes for the information about what people have bought, like receipts from department stores or the automotive loan companies, the Journal reported on Tuesday. Yahoo executives, was bought by the Verizon in June 2017 and placed under the Oath umbrella, have been tumbling interest-based advertising to the marketers.

Yahoo sorts emails into different categories for instance if someone gets a flight confirmation and they might be put into a “frequent traveler” group. That person may then see advertising for the hotel chains which may show on other websites. AOL also owned by Oath, scans emails in this manner as well, the Journal’s report said. Data are anonymized and aggregated, so advertisers wouldn’t have access to the information of individuals.

The type of scanning only applies to the emails from organizations and not personal messages, as per the vice president of data Oath insights and measurements. Dough Sharp, said the Journal that research of Yahoo shows people prefer personalized advertising. He added, “Email is an outstanding system” and it is reasonable and ethical to expect the “value exchange” if you have gone this mail service and there is advertising going on.”

The privacy pages of Oath explain that the company makes “educated guesses” about the interests of people based on their activity on the sites and apps and also provides advertisement appropriate to what appears online. “Oath’s automated systems might check all content as Mail and Messenger content including quick messages and SMS to detect among other things, certain phrases and words,” the company states.

Oath said the practice spread to AOL mail that it also owns. Along with, they establish the only major U.S. email provider that scans user inboxes for marketing purpose.

The strategy blames a current Silicon Valley trend toward more date privacy and appears an industry divided on where to draw the line between user protections and technologies which many advertisers crave. The practice of Yahoo initiated more than a decade ago and expanded over the years, told a person familiar with this matter. The company has looked increasingly looked for new ways to wring revenue off its aging portfolio of web properties, that have stagnated in the period of social networking and smartphones.

Oath owns various famous websites, like HuffPost and Yahoo Finance and it helps the advertisers show messages on these sites as well as around the web, by using a variety of ad-placement services. Email scanning has become one of the most effective methods of the company for enhancing ad targeting, said Doug Sharp, Oath’s vice president of measurements and insights. He told that the practice applies only to commercial emails in the accounts of people, from retailers, say or, mass mailings and that the users have the capability to choose.

“Being served ads are a part of the trade-off users make in exchange for free online services, and that is the research of Yahoo shows that they prefer advertisement which is relevant to them”, said Mr. Sharp.

Mr. Sharp said that “Email is an expensive system” and “I think it is ethical and reasonable to expect the value exchange if you have got this mail service and there is advertising going on.

The algorithm of Yahoo looks for commercial emails and checks them by using a database of commonly sent emails. The algorithms such as certain types of emails to particular consumer preferences, and then place a “cookies”, a piece of tracking code, on that the computer to help the advertisers show them messages in the future.

Oath ensures to give advertisers an edge by checking groups of users who have bought particular or services based on the receipts, promotions, and travel itineraries in their inboxes said, Mr. Sharp. For instance, he said, Yahoo’s System labels people who get trade confirmations from online brokerage accounts as “investors” who can be targeted for the finance-related advertisements.

Source URL:- https://www.yahoo-helpline.com/blog/yahoo-scanning-emails-and-selling-data-to-advertisers/