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Can someone track when I'm logged into Yahoo?

Is it possible for someone to know when I get on my Yahoo account? I don't have messenger.. I do have some Yahoo groups.. is there a way they can see that I'm on? It seems this person sends some junk to me the minute I sign off.. how can i block anyone from knowing I'm on Yahoo?

Dave's Answer:

While initially I'm reminded of Bill Joy's rather famous dictum that "privacy is dead. Give it up!" in fact we shouldn't have to give up all sense of privacy just because we opt to use a particular Internet service like Yahoo!

It turns out that there is indeed a privacy setting you'll want to change on your Yahoo Groups account that'll prevent others knowing when you're logged in or not.

Here's how I got to it: first, log in to a group you're already a member of by going to Yahoo! Groups and clicking on any of the groups listed on the left side of the resultant page.

On the group information page, on the top, you'll see your Yahoo Group ID, default email address for the group, and a link labelled Edit Membership. Click on that, and you'll see something like this:

There's more below the area shown, but the Add new profile link immediately adjacent to your existing profile is what you want to access. Click on it, and you'll see the setting that you need to change:

You can see the setting: click on the box adjacent to Check the box to hide my online status, press "Finished Editing", and you should have your login activity cloaked from all other Yahoo users.

Hope that gets your privacy back!

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Comments

if a user has multiple yahoo messenger id's, is it possible to know which username the user has used to log in to the messenger in the server?

Posted by: venkatesh at April 25, 2007 9:32 AM

Hi dave, I know you can track the IP address from an email, but how/can you track where an IM from Yahoo is coming from? Any Help would be greatly appreciated! I think I'm being scammed by some chick on-line. She will not send me any more emails cause she knows I have tracked them!

Regards,
Herman

Posted by: Herman at January 16, 2008 1:12 AM

Why do I go for days without having to sign in with my password, when (like today) I may have to sign in 4 times in 5 minutes, then an hour later, etc. This will drop me out of whatever I'm doing, and then after entering my password I have to re-log in to my other site - which many times I have to start from the very first and have lost the info I had before the damned computater thingy asked me for my stinking passwor.

Posted by: JAMES ROBERTS at March 24, 2008 3:32 PM

Thanks so much for this information about Yahoo Groups, but I have a follow up question. We all know that (with the exception of gmail) you can trace the sender's ip address from the header on the email. But can the owner/organizer of a Yahoo Group (not Yahoo Corporate themselves, but the administrator or moderator) trace the IP address of a member logged into that group? is the log-in traced by originating IP address, and if so, can that be blocked or hidden? Many thanks. Dave Huff

Posted by: David Huff at September 30, 2009 10:23 AM

I have a lot to say, but ...

I have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but most of all I'd like to say thank you for all your efforts on this Web site by buying you a chai!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!