Beginning with Yahoo! Toolbar version 7.1, users can explicitly opt-in to share this information to help make Yahoo! products and search better for everyone. This is voluntary, and the information Yahoo! Toolbar version 7.1 collects is not connected to your Yahoo! ID. Users can also turn this off or on at any time under Toolbar Options in the Settings menu.

You say you are not recording Yahoo! IDs with the web site data, but I see that Yahoo! cookies are being sent with the website info. What is happening here?

Yahoo! Toolbar uses normal HTTP to send clickstream information. Because all Yahoo! domain cookies are transmitted automatically to us by the browser, Yahoo! could receive cookie information that is associated with a user’s account.

To prevent this, Yahoo! takes steps to ensure that cookies associated with a user’s account (and which could contain personally identifiable information if the user is logged in) are NOT recorded with clickstream data. We do this to help maintain the privacy of a user’s toolbar usage.

Why are you asking users to share information about web sites they visit?

One example is that this information (in aggregate) can be used to help improve ranking of search results for everyone.