HARDER TO USE FLASH IN CHROME

Google has made it more difficult to use the Adobe Flash plug-in while browsing online in Chrome. In version 69, released in early September, you have to activate Flash every time you visit a website that needs it. Before, you only had to tell Chrome once that you wanted Flash to run on a particular site. Chrome will stop supporting Flash completely in 2020, following years of security flaws being discovered in it.

Yahoo has admitted that it scans users’ emails to show targeted adverts based on their interests and lifestyle.

Oath, the US company that owns Yahoo, said it builds ‘interest profiles’ of users by monitoring emails they receive from companies.

Neither Google nor Microsoft scan emails in Gmail and Outlook respectively, which means Oath is the only major email provider to do so.

The company was forced to justify its stance after a Wall Street Journal investigation that spoke to former employees. The company responded by saying email was “an expensive system”, and that showing adverts was “reasonable and ethical”.

Oath claimed it doesn’t scan personal emails, only commercial messages, looking for details such as shopping receipts. It then places a cookie on the computer to show related adverts in future.

For example, someone who regularly receives emails confirming flights might be classified a ‘frequent traveller’ and be shown adverts for hotels. On its privacy page ( www.snipca.com/28986), Oath says its algorithms make an “educated guess” as to your interests based on your emails and other online activity.

It even scans receipts in emails to see whether the user bought a product after seeing an advert for it. Oath can use this information to persuade companies to advertise.

Oath said it uses cookies to place users into groups so that it doesn’t have to hand over any personal information to advertisers. The company removes names and email addresses from the data.

Oath does let you opt out of adverts (see box). The option is tucked away in Settings.