Yahoo’s Ad Internet Manager reveals the information that Yahoo has accumulated based on activity on Yahoo sites like Flickr, Delicious or Yahoo Search.

The data consists of factual data, e.g. a user’s IP address, and “educated guesses” based on the usage of Yahoo services.

The information on the Ad Interest Manager page are divided into three groups: Interest Categories, Activities, and Computer and Cookies.

ad interest manager

Interest Categories are set based on the pages that have been visited in the past, ads that have been clicked on and viewed, and searches that have been conducted.

Activities highlight the use of Yahoo network sites by the user. It displays an activity level for each service used.

Computer and Cookies finally displays the user’s IP address and location, operating system, browser, screen resolution, color depth, age range and gender.

The information may differ depending on the web browser used to access the Ad Internet Manager website.

The page offers an opt out option to block interest based ads from being displayed. It the choice is made a cookie is saved to the computer that blocks interest based ads. This still means that ads are shown, but that those ads are not “fine tuned” by other information.

It is interesting to note that some information are guesswork, the age and gender of a user for instance. In our tests, Yahoo thought we were a 26-35 female from Mont-de-Marsan, Aquitaine, or a 56-65 female from New York, depending on the browser used to access the page. It is puzzling that the IP lookup returned locations in two different countries, with both of them being incorrect.

The Ad Interest Manager does not support Google Chrome yet, both the OS and browser information where set to unknown or blank.

Yahoo is not the only company that makes use of interest based ads. Google for instance offers a similar service that they call Ads Preferences, which can, when coupled with the information of the Google Dashboard, reveal lots of information about a particular user.

Opt Out Pages:

Yahoo Opt-Out
Google Opt-Out
Microsoft Advertising Opt-Out
Amazon Opt-Out
Privacy Choice Opt-Out (multiple ad networks)

You may also be interested in the guide “What is a tracking cookie” that not only explains what a tracking cookie is, but also how to disable them in popular web browsers.

How do you handle interest based ads and tracking cookies? Let us know in the comments.

Streamarmor is an easy to use software program for the Windows operating system that can scan the contents of a hard drive for alternate data streams.

Streamarmor will automatically scan all files for alternate data streams and report its findings in the program’s interface. Each stream is rated as dangerous, suspicious or needs analysis which makes it easier for the user to identify potentially dangerous streams.

A snapshot of the data stream as well as additional information are displayed in the interface as well. Streamarmor uses the three online services Virus Total, Threat Expert and Malware Hash that can be used to scan streams that have been found by the program. The user needs to select one of the discovered streams and the check online button to do that. Only Virus Total is selected by default, the other two services have to be activated in the options.

The alternate data streams can also be viewed completely or saved to a file on the local system. An export option can furthermore save the report of the discovered streams as a html file.

Streamarmor is an excellent software to scan a computer system for alternate data streams. The integration of online threat scanners makes the program easy to work with. The tool is available for 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Windows operating system.

A user of the DSL Reports forum has converted the Adblock Plus list of blocked advertisement into an XML format that can be imported into Internet Explorer 8. All that needs to be done is to download the xml file from the website and import it into Internet Explorer 8 so that all of the ads and ad providers on that list are blocked automatically in Internet Explorer 8. The file has a size of more than eight Kilobytes and can be imported into Internet Explorer the following way after downloading and unpacking it.

Open Internet Explorer 8. Access Tools > InPrivate Filtering Settings from the toolbar menu.

A click on the Advanced Settings link in the lower half will open a new window that can be used to import filters in xml format.

The xml list can be imported easily by clicking on the Import button and selecting the xml file from the local hard drive. A message should appear notifying the user that the list was successfully imported. The main window should be filled with blocking rules after clicking ok.

The ads will now be automatically blocked in Internet Explorer. The only problems with this approach are that there is no way of automatically updating the list in regular intervals. There is also no option to enable the list globally but disable it on selected websites.

The Inside Adsense blog made an announcement today that changes this restriction. Adsense users can now switch from the default Google Adsense font selection to either Arial, Verdana or Times. This makes it easier to use the same font for the display of Adsense units that is being used on the rest of the website. It is most likely that using the same font to display the Adsense unit and the content on the website will yield higher revenue.

It is probably a good idea to test all three new font combinations on the website to find the one with the best results. Fonts can be changed for single ad units or globally in the Adsense account. A click on the My Account link in the top menu and a selection of Ad Display Preference will open the menu where the font setting can be edited globally. Individual ad units can be changed by clicking on Adsense Setup > Manage Ads > Edit Ad Settings.

Being able to change the default font face is definitely a step in the right direction. Premium publishers have still an advantage as they can change the font size and other settings as well which are still locked for non-premium users.

A regular reader is one that views at least three pages on my website in 14 days. I’m not sure how this is going to be tracked, probably through the use of cookies. This is a test only and it could turn out that my regular readers are clicking the ads and the ones that are referred from other websites are not.

If that is the case and my earnings drop a lot I will turn it back on because that’s how I make my living. I hope that it turns out to be beneficial to everyone. Less ads is always nice and if the earnings remain stable I will definitely keep the plugin. Hope you can understand my motivation to do it that way.

This brings up some interesting moral but also legal questions. Website owners have no idea, and obviously no control, that ads are displayed on their websites. The problem here is that they probably do not have the means to verify that ads are displayed either unless someone would come up with a log that showed which websites have been affected by this practice. Customers however are on the other end of the spectrum. Their traffic is meddled with and are shown ads that are probably specifically targeted to increase the success rate.

Some ISP names have been published by the researchers already: RedMoon, Mesa Networks, MetroFi and XO Communications with the last being one of the largest ISPs in the country and only in that list because of a smaller reseller according to an XO spokesman. It will be interesting to access the full list of Internet Service Providers that inject ads in websites without their customers consent.

Update: The topic of injecting ads into websites that their customers visit has really caused that much of a public outcry than it should have. Most newspapers and news agencies, even technology related ones, have not covered ad injection by Internet Service Providers ever since it first became known.