Yahoo on Tuesday debuted a new feature that enables people to opt out of mobile ads that are based on behavioral targeting. The announcement was made on its Yahoo Policy Blog and is the Web portal’s latest effort toward its commitment to consumer data privacy.
“Our approach to privacy in the mobile environment is consistent with Yahoo’s overall approach to user privacy,” said Yahoo’s policy director, Deepti Rohatgi, in the blog post. “We want to maintain the trust we have built by giving our users more control and choice about how they share info with friends and customize their experience on Yahoo mobile properties.”
Yahoo said in its post that the mobile experience should offer the same privacy protections consumers expect to find on the PC. At the same time, it said it recognizes the “unique attributes of the mobile environment” and indicated it takes “special care to tailor our privacy features for the unique attributes of the mobile environment.”
Anne Toth, VP and head of privacy at Yahoo told DMNews: “With this announcement, we wanted users to know they could activate their opt out on the mobile device.” Toth added, “That will be increasingly important because a as more users engage only on mobile devices.”
Issues around behavioral targeting have been top of mind in the advertising and marketing industry. On July 2, several industry trade groups released a joint document on behavioral targeting best practices in an attempt to self-regulate ahead of any federal legislation.
