It has emerged that Yahoo secretly scanned users’ emails and shared millions of users’ data with US intelligence services. Yahoo is said to be the first company to agree to scan incoming mail in real time, starting work on the partnership last spring and building special software for it.
In a written statement the company said, “Yahoo is a law-abiding company and will comply with US laws.” Those laws let intelligence agencies request user data for certain reasons, and companies can challenge the requests in court.
Attention then turned to Facebook, Microsoft, Google, and Twitter. The tech giants said they had not received such a cooperation offer and had not shared user data that way.
Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden told followers on Twitter to stop using Yahoo:
Use @Yahoo? They secretly scanned everything you ever wrote, far beyond what law requires. Close your account today. https://t.co/dJrJUyyxk6
– Edward Snowden (@Snowden) 4 Ekim 2016
In an earlier transparency report Yahoo had written, “We worked for years to earn our users’ trust and we fight to keep it.” Apparently last year’s partnership did not make it into the report.
Two weeks earlier Yahoo had also disclosed that hackers stole data on 500 million users.
