It also comes as Yahoo has become increasingly vocal about the value of the data it collects on its users, pointing out that that is something that differentiates it from competitors. “When users come to Yahoo across all these assets, including the home page, they do one thing that is the most exciting, at least for me—which is they leave a data footprint,” VP Dev Patel told analysts a month ago. “They tell me what they’re interested in, they tell me what kind of things they’re searching on, tell me what kind of articles they’re reading… That’s something unique about Yahoo, way beyond the home page, which you singled out… Data is the key that unlocks the value of inventory.”

Assertions like those are sure to raise eyebrows in Washington, D.C., especially considering Yahoo’s pending search deal with Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT)—and that’s something that Yahoo likely wants to quell with the new tool. However, PC World‘s David Coursey writes that despite Yahoo’s pitch, it’s not clear that users can opt out of the ads entirely, since the company warns that “in addition to the information shown here, Yahoo may use publicly available information or information provided by partners to help customize some of the ads we show.”