Andre Yoskowitz
5 Oct 2016 11:04
A bombshell Reuters report today claims that Yahoo was secretly scanning your emails to provide information for U.S. intelligence officials.
The report claims that Yahoo scanned hundreds of millions of emails at the behest of the NSA or the FBI, the first known time that a U.S. Internet company has agreed to a demand to search all incoming messages. In the past, other companies, such as Google and Apple, have agreed to examine stored messages following a crime (for example), but it appears that Yahoo gave the U.S. government carte blanche access.
For now, it is unknown what the officials were looking for "only that they wanted Yahoo to search for a set of characters." it is also unclear what data may have been found or handed over.
According to ex-employees, the decision to follow the classified demand led to the resignation of CIO Alex Stamos, who believed that the directive would lead to massive privacy issues.
Google and Microsoft were quick to deny that they had also been asked by US officials for the same access. "We've never received such a request, but if we did, our response would be simple: 'No way'," added Google.
A Microsoft spokesperson bluntly added: "We have never engaged in the secret scanning of email traffic like what has been reported today about Yahoo."