Yahoo Web Beacons: Annoying Privacy Breach Or Helpful Feature?

When I found this page, I made a comment out loud. Imagine an Andy Griffithesque southern accent while reading and you'll understand why I don't have a career in radio.

"Lord, it's enough to make you pitch your pimentos, ain't it?"

The object of my epithet was Yahoo's discussion of their use of those 1x1 "web bugs" -- only they call them "web beacons." Lemme preface my thoughts by complimenting Yahoo for their disclosure page. I appreciate them being forthright about it.

But a couple of things on this page bother me. ( http://privacy.yahoo.com/privacy/us/pixels/ ). The first thing is the fact that they're using web bugs at all. (No, I'm not going to call them beacons.) Why aren't cookies good enough?

Second are the fact that they're putting these bugs in mail: "Yahoo!'s practice is to include web beacons in HTML-formatted email messages (messages that include graphics) that Yahoo! itself sends in order to count how many messages have been opened." Now, add that little message to the fact that Yahoo recently purchased eGroups, which is a huge free e-mail list service and... well, I'm troubled. Stay tuned.

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