Why Does Ad.YieldManager Keep Popping Up on My Yahoo Chat?
To support its free chat software, Yahoo serves advertisements via its instant messaging system. You can disable ads that pop up when you're chatting using free software utilities. Note that if pop-ups carry security warnings about normally innocuous advertising cookies, this can be a sign that your computer is infected with malicious software that you need to remove.
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Yahoo Chat Advertisements
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Yahoo's network of Web-based properties includes a search facility, email services, and its instant messenger service. All of Yahoo's properties are used to serve advertisements that bring in revenue for the company. These can appear as text links, images, animations and videos alongside other Web content. Yahoo tries to target its advertising content so that you'll see advertising that's relevant to your interests. Opt out of targeted ads by going to Yahoo's Ad Interest Manager page and clicking "opt out"; this won't stop pop-ups but it does prevent Yahoo from placing tracking cookies on your computer.
Ad.Yieldmanager.com
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Ad.yieldmanager.com is a tracking cookie used by an advertiser to automatically track your browsing habits so that you can be served ads that are targeted based on your previous activity. For example, if you look at numerous pages to do with hiking and backpacking, you'll be shown more ads for walking boots and camping equipment. Ad.yieldmanager.com also tracks how long you stay on a page and other information about your Web surfing history. While tracking cookies don't pose a direct risk to your computer's security, removing ad.yieldmanager.com (and variants such as adyieldmanager.com and yieldmanager.com) gives you extra privacy when browsing.
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Removing Advertisements from Yahoo Chat
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if you don't want to see advertisements when you're using Yahoo chat, you can block them with specialist software. Some of this software is free to download. Ensure that anything you download is free from viruses by downloading from a legitimate source. In addition, buy security software that offers real-time protection and checks your downloads for malicious code. Before you install anything that interacts with Yahoo chat, make sure that it doesn't violate Yahoo's terms of service. You can check the current terms of service by visiting the Yahoo Terms Center and selecting Messenger from the links on that page.
Clearing Cookies
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Cookies are small pieces of code that are stored in a folder in your browser. By clearing this folder, you can get rid of tracking cookies like ad.yieldmanager.com. It is also possible to block ad.yieldmanager.com from being added to your cookies again, although this requires editing your registry. However, you should never change anything in your computer's registry unless you are very experienced in working with registry settings, as you can badly damage your operating system if you remove or change the wrong entry. Cookies can store useful information, such as your preferences and log-in status for a particular website; it can be inconvenient to delete all of your cookies.
Anti-Spyware Utilities
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Anti-spyware utilities are designed to identify and remove any code on your computer that might collect information and transmit it to someone else. Because advertising cookies like ad.yieldmanager.com are considered spyware by some, anti-spyware utilities can often remove them. This can be more convenient than removing a specific cookie manually.
Ad.Yieldmanager.com Warning Messages
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Because ad.yieldmanager.com is just a tracking cookie and doesn't technically qualify as malicious code, it should not trigger warning messages from your security software. If you are seeing pop-up warnings that refer to ad.yieldmanager.com as a virus or a threat, your computer may be infected with bogus security software or "scareware." Scareware is malicious code, usually a Trojan horse, that serves fake security warnings to trick you into buying security software. If you pay the fee to download this software, all you'll get is either a dummy program or more malware, while your credit or debit card number may be stolen in the process. You need to remove this scareware. If your standard anti-virus software doesn't tackle the problem, download and install a utility that's specifically designed to cope with Trojan horses. Your current anti-virus may have an upgrade that can spot and delete Trojans; there are also free utilities you can download.
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