Our Products

Our Products

When you use our , we collect, use and share your data in different ways as described in our Privacy Policy and our Cookie Policy. This page describes current additional privacy practices and considerations that apply to our Products. From communications products, to media, to search. Check out our range of Products below to learn more about how we use your data, how we share it and what controls you have for each Product. You can see and manage how we use your data in Your Privacy Controls.

Some of our Products are only available if you are a registered user. Please visit our Help Pages if you have questions about these Products.

Our practices may change as we revise our Products by adding or removing features or using different partners and providers.

Our ‘Communications Products’ include Yahoo Address Book, Yahoo Calendar, Yahoo Groups, Yahoo Mail, AOL Mail, and Yahoo Notepad. If you want to learn more about these products, check out this section below.

How does Yahoo collect and use your data from Communications Products?

The way we collect and use your data, will depend on the different types of products. Below we explain how we collect and use your data for each product.

What Mail data does Yahoo collect?

We collect and content data from:

  • sent and received emails
  • photos
  • attachments

How does Yahoo use your Mail data?

We use your Mail data for the following purposes:

  • to provide the emails you receive from senders in your inbox, and send your emails to your recipients
  • to provide filters and other features to give you a better Mail experience.  For example:
    • to allow you to search, customise and organise your inbox
    • to highlight certain emails you receive over others, such as those that contain shipping information, travel information, documents or photos
    • to identify spam, malware, phishing emails and other means of fraud
      • For example, when users click on the Spam and Not Spam buttons, our anti-spam team or other spam compliance service providers may manually review the messages. Sometimes, we share aspects of these messages with senders to reduce spam messages and improve the quality of emails from other parties in return.
  • with your consent, to provide you with content and ads that we think you’ll find more interesting and relevant on our and elsewhere on the

How does Mail analysis work?

Our Mail products analyse and organise your incoming commercial emails for your convenience. Commercial emails are structured emails from retailers and other organisations. Here’s how the analysis works: 

  • When you receive commercial emails, we may identify certain elements of those messages, like keywords, package tracking and product identification numbers, and prices.
    • During this process, we automatically attempt to remove any information that on its own could reasonably identify you, like your name or address.
  • We use the information from our analysis to power Mail features for you, such as parcel tracking.
  • With your consent, we will use certain analysed elements of your commercial emails to personalise your content and ads. We do not analyse emails from individuals like your friends and family to personalise content and ads. To further protect user privacy:
    • no emails or any email content leaves our systems in connection with Mail analysis.
    • no user-level information or advertising segments based on Mail data are shared with advertisers. Advertising segments based on Mail data are only available to advertisers on our systems. 
    • advertising segments created from Mail analysis require a minimum number of users.

Gmail data you share with Yahoo

If you provide Yahoo access to your Gmail data, Yahoo will only access such data to provide features in our email clients such as the ability to compose, send, read, and process emails (including attachments) and will not transfer this Gmail data to third parties unless doing so is necessary to provide and improve these features, comply with applicable law, or as part of a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets. Yahoo will not use your Gmail data for serving advertisements.

Yahoo will not allow humans to read your Gmail data unless:

  • Yahoo has your affirmative consent for specific messages;
  • doing so is necessary for security purposes (such as investigating a bug or abuse) or to comply with applicable law

How can you manage your Mail data?

To download a copy of your Mail data, visit the Mail Download Manager.

  • For AOL Mail: click here
  • For Yahoo Mail: click here

To withdraw your consent for Yahoo to analyse your Mail for ads and content personalisation, visit Your Privacy Controls.

To delete your AOL or Yahoo Mail account, or exercise certain controls over our use of your data visit Your Privacy Controls.
 

How do you manage your preferences on Yahoo Calendar?

  • You can choose to make your Calendar publicly viewable, viewable to a selected set of other users, or private (non-viewable).
  • If you allow others to view your Calendar, you can choose whether each appointment is hidden, appears as ‘Busy’, or appears with details.
  • You can modify the default event permission setting from the ‘Options’ page of your Calendar. Your event permission setting change will apply to any events that you add after you have made the setting change, but will not change the setting of events that you have added prior to the change.
  • You can also modify the permission of each event individually from the edit page for that event.
  • We store Calendar details when you synchronise data from your devices or other accounts.

How does Yahoo use your Yahoo Groups data?

  • Messages that you email to the Group will display your personal information, including:
    • email address
    • name and alias
    • Yahoo ID
    • status of your membership
  • When you send an email message to a Group that you are a member of, all members of that Group will receive your message.
  • Your personal information, like your email address, your name and alias, Yahoo ID, membership status and date you joined the Group will be visible to the Group owner and moderators of any Group to which you belong.
  • The personal email addresses of Group owners and moderators who invite members to join the Group via the ‘invite’ tool are visible to the invitation recipients.

How do you manage your Yahoo Groups data?

  • To view your personal information associated with your Groups, visit Your Privacy Controls.
  • You can edit your personal information associated with each Group you are a member of by going to ‘Manage my Groups’.
  • We may store the contacts and calendar details from Mail and when you synchronize data from your devices (for example, your phone contacts) or third party services that you connect with your account.
    • Synced contacts from third-party services may repopulate after you delete them unless you disable the syncing feature.

How does Yahoo share your Communications data?

  • Connecting your Mail account to a third-party service may require you to share information with that service (for example, your email address or email content). Yahoo does not control, and is not responsible for, how those third-party services process and use your data. 
  • When you send emails, certain information from your Mail account may be visible to the recipients, such as your name, nickname, avatar, image, gender identity, city, online status, contact information associated with your account or other information that you have chosen to make public.
  • As explained in our Privacy Policy, in certain situations, we share communications data associated with users’ accounts with third parties and government agencies:
    • to investigate, prevent, detect or prosecute criminal offences, infringement of our Terms or violations of third parties’ rights
    • to protect our users and their data
    • to investigate and resolve technical issues
    • to comply with regulatory obligations
    • to establish or exercise our legal rights or defend against legal claims
  • Our Communications Products include interactive features from third parties, such as cloud storage services (for example, sending large attachments to your contacts) and intelligent folder agents (for example, moving all of your receipts automatically to specific folders or providing reports on your spending).  

 

Our search products include Yahoo Search, AOL Search and OneSearch. Check out this section to learn about how we collect, use and share your data to provide these , and how to control our use of your Search data.

How does Yahoo use your Yahoo Search and AOL Search data?

  • When you conduct a search on a product that uses our search box, we collect information, including cookies, device type, device identifiers, IP address, user agent information and your search query.
  • We help you find what you are looking for by automatically offering popular search terms and new topics to consider. We base our suggestions on aggregated data that we collect from all searches, and also from your individual search history.
  • We use your IP address to determine your location and provide you with information specific to your location, such as maps, local business listings and reviews, or local events.
  • Some advertising that we show you may be personalised to you based on your search queries. Please visit the ‘Search History’ tab in Your Privacy Controls to manage how Yahoo uses your search history. If you stop our use of your search history to personalise your ads, you will continue to see ads from us, but they won’t be customised to your search history.
  • When you use Yahoo Search, you may see relevant, private results selected from other sources, such as your Yahoo Mail. Only you can see your private search results when you’re signed in. Learn how to manage, including turning off, private results.

How do you manage your Yahoo Search and AOL Search data?

Visit your Search preferences to manage your Search experience, including safe search, and whether or not you see personalised Search results.

  • For AOL Search: click here
  • For Yahoo Search: click here

To see and manage what you’ve searched for in the past, visit your Search History:

  • For AOL Search: click here
  • For Yahoo Search: click here

Residents in Europe can request that certain URLs be blocked from Yahoo Search results in certain circumstances. You can submit your request here.

NOTE: if you wish to request that URLs be blocked from AOL Search results, you must contact Microsoft, via this form.
 

How does Yahoo share your Yahoo Search and AOL Search data?

  • A variety of partners help power our Yahoo Search and AOL Search products, including our sponsored search services.
  • We share information such as your search query, IP address and other information from your web browser or app, with these search partners.
  • These partners use this information, as well as your search result clicks, to provide relevant advertising and search results, for search product improvement, research and analysis, and to help detect and defend against fraudulent activity on sponsored or contextual search results.
  • We may reformat results provided by these partners to improve your search experience, but we will never change the order of algorithmic search results.

To learn more about the data collection and use practices by these search partners, please visit Our Partners page.
 

Sponsored Search Results

  • Sponsored search results include information from advertisers that have paid for placement within search results. These results are provided by our search partner, Microsoft.
  • Search results may contain tracking URLs provided by Yahoo and/or our search partners to identify clicks from the search results page. 

Reviews

  • If you choose to provide a review, your review will include your Yahoo ID or alias or other account information that you have made public and will link to your profile. Use the drop-down menu to choose the alias that you would like to post with. You can also create a new alias and profile.
  • It is not currently possible to edit your review once it has been posted, however if you try to post a second review, you will see your previous review which can then be resubmitted.

Comments

  • You must be a logged-in, registered user to post a comment on user reviews. When you comment, your profile is linked to that content and your display name and profile photo are visible to other users.
  • Comments that you post will be publicly displayed along with your Yahoo ID or chosen nickname, and your profile picture or avatar.
  • You can also delete a comment that you have posted by selecting the ‘delete’ option next to the comment that you wish to remove.
  • You can check your comments on the ‘My comments’ tab next to the commenting streams.
  • If you do post comments or reviews, please use common sense and good judgment when posting or sharing your personal information with others. Be aware that any personal information you choose to submit can be read, collected, used by others or used to send unsolicited messages to you. You are responsible for the personal information you choose to post on our .

Our Subscription Products are available for a fee.

When you sign up for Subscription Products, you will be asked to provide your payment information. We will use this information to complete the transaction and activate your Subscription Product.

Yahoo takes your security seriously. We use industry-standard SSL (Secure Socket Layer) to encrypt the transmission of your payment information and other information used when ordering Subscription Products.

To view, edit or cancel your Subscription Products, please visit our Help Pages for more information.

Our Media include Yahoo News, HuffPost, Yahoo Finance, AOL Finance, Yahoo Weather and Yahoo Answers. Check out the section below to learn about how we collect, use and share your data when you visit these Products.

How does Yahoo use your Media data?

  • When you visit our Media Products, we collect your data, including:
    • information you provide to us directly
    • your browsing activity
    • your location
    • items you watched
    • items you like and follow
    • media you consume
    • searches you carry out
  • We use this data to understand your interests and provide you with personalised ads, articles, videos and other content that we show you on our and .
  • You can make suggestions and provide feedback in our Media Products. We will use this information to improve our Products.

How does Yahoo share your Media data?

  • Comments you make in our Media Products are public and may include your name, nickname, avatar, image and/or contact information associated with your account.
  • You may share articles, videos, and other content using our email or other social media sharing features. When using these features, your name, user profile/name, and/or email address may be visible to the recipient(s).
  • When you complete a form to receive more information (for example, quotes, travel services, or real estate services) from our partners, your information will be shared with, or in some cases collected directly by, these partners as described on those forms. To learn how they use your information, please review their respective privacy policies. They are solely responsible for their use of this information.
  • Some features on our Media Products are provided by Partners that collect information from our Media Products, or from services associated with our but hosted by the partner.
  • We analyse and store information about the content you provide, such as photos, attachments and other communications. For example, when included as part of your images, we may collect information relating to your camera, camera settings or . This information allows us to maintain our Products secure and improve their features and functionality.

How does Yahoo use your Yahoo Answers data?

Yahoo collects information about your activity in Yahoo Answers, including specific questions, answers, comments and votes. Some of the information we collect may constitute your personal information.

How does Yahoo share your Yahoo Answers data?

When you engage in certain activities on Yahoo Answers, for example, when you ask, answer or comment on message posts, these activities will automatically be assigned or linked to either your Yahoo User ID or any nickname you wish. Your activities will be tied to the name you select. You may change this name at any time and the name linked to all previous activity will be changed as well.

All questions, answers, and comments that you post can be viewed by anyone visiting the Yahoo Answers site or visiting partner sites that include Yahoo Answers content.

When enabling user-to-user emails in Yahoo Answers, your Yahoo User ID and email address are not shared.

You can post anonymously on Yahoo Answers and the posts will appear as anonymous to the public.  As noted above, we will automatically assign or link your post to your Yahoo User ID or your chosen nickname.  Yahoo will share Yahoo Answers content and associated IDs:

  • to investigate, prevent, detect or prosecute criminal offences, infringement of our Terms of Service or violations of third parties’ rights
  • to protect our users and their data
  • to establish or exercise our legal rights or defend against legal claims

How can you update or delete your Yahoo Answers data?

  • You can see your activity and watchlist, edit your preferences, find your profile and change your settings using My activity.
  • You can add details to or delete questions you've asked for as long as the question is open.
    • Once the question has been resolved, you cannot make changes or delete your content. However, if you asked the question, you can make yourself anonymous within the product settings.
  • Questions, answers, comments or nicknames can be removed at any time by Yahoo  if we determine that they violate our Terms. 
    • If your account is deactivated, your content will remain (including photos and videos), but your nickname and profile picture will be anonymised. If you wish to have content removed, you will need to contact the Yahoo Customer Care team.

Yahoo Finance and AOL Finance offer a wide variety of financial resources, from live market coverage, to trading and stock quotes and personalised finance content and tools.

How does Yahoo share your Media data?

  • Yahoo Finance and AOL Finance have relationships with partners who provide tools that are linked to these products. When you use these tools, our partners collect information from you directly.
  • Yahoo Finance and AOL Finance have other partners with whom we share certain information collected from you, for example when you use tools such as mortgage calculators. We do not share information that, on its own, can be used to reasonably identify or contact you (such as your name or email address). We may share pseudonymous information, including demographic information.
  • Yahoo is not responsible for the privacy policies of sites or tools that are linked from Yahoo Finance or AOL Finance.

How does Yahoo use your Yahoo Shopping data?

  • We use your Yahoo Shopping queries and Yahoo Shopping browsing history to customise your experience and provide you with ads that may be of more interest to you. Visit Your Privacy Controls to learn more about your ability to manage your data.

How does Yahoo share your Yahoo Shopping data?

  • When you make a purchase from a merchant listed on Yahoo Shopping, you are interacting directly with that merchant.
  • Each merchant is solely responsible for its use of your personal and order information. Visit their privacy policies to learn how they use your personal information.

My Yahoo enables you to personalise the news feeds, articles and other web services that interest you. You must be a registered Yahoo user to customise My Yahoo.

How does Yahoo use your data when you use My Yahoo?

  • My Yahoo modules allow you to interact with web services provided by Yahoo and third parties.
  • When you use a module to access third-party services such as YouTube, Yahoo will collect information about how you interact with that module to improve My Yahoo and personalise your services. The provider of the third-party service may collect information based on your interaction, which collection and use is in accordance with its privacy policy.

How can you manage My Yahoo?

  • You can remove a module by clicking the gear symbol in the bottom corner of the module and selecting ‘Remove’.

Yahoo Sports gives you access to coverage from major publishers in one single destination. We tackle sports from every angle, the raw emotion and what really makes players tick.

How does Yahoo use your Yahoo Sports data?

In season-long Fantasy sports leagues, your email address is visible to others in the league by default. You can change this setting in each league.