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Yahoo's New Privacy Policy Allows Data-Sharing With Verizon (cnet.com)
"Yahoo is now part of Oath and there is a new Privacy and Terms contract..." warns long-time Slashdot reader DigitalLogic. CNET reports:
Oath notes that it has the right to read your emails, instant messages, posts, photos and even look at your message attachments. And it might share that data with parent company Verizon, too... When you dig further into Oath's policy about what it might do with your words, photos, and attachments, the company clarifies that it's utilizing automated systems that help the company with security, research and providing targeted ads -- and that those automated systems should strip out personally identifying information before letting any humans look at your data. But there are no explicit guarantees on that.
The update also warns that Oath is now "linking your activity on other sites and apps with information we have about you, and providing anonymized and/or aggregated reports to other parties regarding user trends." For example, Oath "may analyze user content around certain interactions with financial institutions," and "leverages information financial institutions are allowed to send over email."
Oath does offer a "Privacy Controls" page which includes a "legacy" AOL link letting you opt-out of internet-based advertising that's been targeted "based on your online activities" -- but it appears to be functioning sporadically.
CNET also reports that now Yahoo users are agreeing to a class-action waiver and mutual arbitration. "What it means is if you don't like what the company does with your data, you'll have a hard time suing."
The update also warns that Oath is now "linking your activity on other sites and apps with information we have about you, and providing anonymized and/or aggregated reports to other parties regarding user trends." For example, Oath "may analyze user content around certain interactions with financial institutions," and "leverages information financial institutions are allowed to send over email."
Oath does offer a "Privacy Controls" page which includes a "legacy" AOL link letting you opt-out of internet-based advertising that's been targeted "based on your online activities" -- but it appears to be functioning sporadically.
CNET also reports that now Yahoo users are agreeing to a class-action waiver and mutual arbitration. "What it means is if you don't like what the company does with your data, you'll have a hard time suing."
Slowly the frog boils
although not so slowly lately
Very Orwellian.
Rick B.
And no one was warned so if you didn't want your data pilfered you didn't have a chance to delete it beforehand. Not that deleting it doesn't mean they won't scan their backups and data mine that, but at least you would have gotten to feel like you protected yourself.
Now the only hope you have is to never login again and thus you've never accepted the new terms so you're not bound by them and technically they can't apply their new permissions to your account. But good luck trying to win that in court.
ToS and similar contracts are so fucked up. It should be illegal to change them without prior approval.
I had a yahoo email account for decades ; about a half-decade back they forced me to have a "recovery email address", I provided a fake one and it was fine.
For years, they asked for my phone number every time I logged in, to "improve my security" or whatever.
Now after "Oath" is running the show, they don't allow me to log in. They want me to check the recovery email address, which doesn't exist.
A shame : I can't even go in there and delete things.
I should have known better and deleted everything before it was too late. But I had all my accounts like ebay, amazon etc. tied in here.
Now it's clear that Yahoo is your enemy, just like gmail, failbook and others.
Just like Google, then? Using our info for the highest profit.
As a totally unrelated side note, there is this cool thing called ProtonMail...
People still use this company? Last I checked they couldn't even do search right and had to piggy back bing.
...said nobody.
AOL Email is on Yahoo servers
Other than being too lazy to switch to an email only provider that doesn't treat you as the product.
Who uses Yahoo any more? After that big ass data breach I figured most smart people would close any accounts they had there.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
Automated, at least, reading of all internet message traffic including your email is implicitly required by FOSTA (or any other law that makes services liable for their traffic contents). Yahoo and Verizon are criminally and civilly liable if anyone is using their system to enable or arrange any aspect of sex for money.
If someone were killed in a meetup and the investigation afterward indicated any portion of the meetup had been enabled by their email system, as an involved entity with deep pockets, they are going to get hit up in a civil case. Period.
It is the civil portion that scares these companies the most because prosecutorial discretion won't save them from at least occurring big legal fees. There is an army of attorneys gearing up to make money off of this law.
Yahoo has to be able to prove that they have taken measures to at least try to prevent the use of their system to arrange sex for money trades or coordinate trafficking and the language used in the emails that get through had better be "coded" language that they can reasonably argue a trained person would not have picked up, much less a trained AI.
All online message traffic of all media types will soon be censored by the big guys and the little guys without resources to do so will simply be forced out of business. That is what all regulation does and why the big guys actually like it though they pretend to fight it.
it's no worse than gmail from my point of view. I have both and prefer yahoo. Where else should I go? Been using it since the beginning... had many email providers, paid and unpaid. All have gone away except yahoo and gmail. Been on slashdot since 1997, but still an AC.
finally gets her huge pay off for removing the name yahoo from existence. Well done!
Shameless data-mining pigs in a system where there is no accountability. Even if there wasn't an ad-framework in place, they would still justify doing this as a means of control and power. Leave it to the elite to continue to abuse their privilege unfettered by law or morality.
You do know that any decent DB designer, never deletes data, as this fragments data stores.
The smart way is to just have delete flag, that will not fragment/cause index issues.
Nothing is deleted, just marked as ghosted. Storage is cheap.
Groom pays for wedding, and food and presents, and holidays.
Part of that transaction in return involves sex from the wife for years in return.
Might as well ban all wedding websites/books/amazon.
Basically just owns shares of Alibaba at this point as the main source of their value. I mean do they do anything else relevant?
I had the same yahoo email since it started, now it is closed. They wanted more, they will get nothing.
The simple fact of the matter in the modern age where "ALL" of our communication (banking, credit cards, friends, entertainment, etc, etc) is done electronically and through big companies whose only objective is profit and whose main source of that profit is advertising and selling client information we have given away our power. The only way to remain private is to not use email, not purchase anything online, not do any financial transaction online...etc, etc...Which is actually impossible. Big Brother has us hog tied and under control...