Yahoo ‘Do Not Track’ system will be in place worldwide by early summer

Web giant Yahoo has announced that it will be implementing a “Do Not Track” system — which allows users to opt out of having information collected when they use a site — on all its sites worldwide by early summer. In a statement released today, the company said it would “provide a simple step for consumers to express their ad targeting preferences to Yahoo.” It’s too early to tell exactly what this will include, but it’s likely Yahoo will be making its sites compatible with Do Not Track features on browsers like Firefox and Safari (Chrome’s own version of Do Not Track is supposed to be coming at the end of the year.)

Do Not Track was one of the centerpieces of the Federal Trade Commission’s recently-released privacy framework, and several other large companies, like AOL, opted for it years ago. For Yahoo, this is clearly a bit of an attempt at publicity, but it’s good to see more sites implementing a way for users to control — to some extent — what’s being collected.