When you receive an online or mobile advertisement that seems just too precisely tailored to your individual interests, does it ever make you feel a bit strange and wonder what else is happening with your personal information?

If this sounds familiar, then Yahoo may have the solution for you, as they announce an upgrade to their mobile service which gives consumers greater control over the use of their personal information.

Yahoo typically tries to match advertising with a user’s interests, in an attempt to make the advertising more “relevant”. And in fact, this capability of providing targeted advertising is often cited as one of the major potential advantages of mobile as a marketing channel.

Yahoo now wants to insure that consumers understand and are in control of their personal information

According to the Yahoo Policy Blog, Yahoo already has tailored their privacy policies for the special aspects of mobile. Specifically, the blog states:

• “We have developed a mobile privacy policy which highlights privacy issues specific to mobile, so users can quickly get answers. The mobile privacy policy is easily accessible from all of Yahoo!’s mobile services.
• We make sure to get our users’ permission before we use their GPS or cell tower information; and
• When a signed-in user opts out of interest-based advertising on his or her computer, we respect that opt-out when that user signs into our services on the mobile device.”

Yahoo is now providing an option for users to opt-out of receiving what Yahoo calls “interest-based advertising.

According to Deepti Rohatgi, Policy Director at Yahoo, “Now we have a new feature that lets our users opt out of interest-based advertising from Yahoo! right from their mobile device, making privacy choices even more accessible to our users. We believe we are among the first of our major competitors to offer an opt-out choice of this kind directly from a mobile device.”