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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.
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.
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.
google (gmail,maps,etc) shares data with alphabet(ads).
instagram/whatsapp shares data with facebook.
OnStar shares data with your car manufacturer.
Its just a case of X shares data with X's owner.
If you don't know which company you are really doing business with, that is the main problem.
and forgot: CNET shares data with CBS
People still use this company? Last I checked they couldn't even do search right and had to piggy back bing.
I still seem to be subscribed to a couple of mailing lists from egroups that Yahoo bought out, unluckily I have no idea how to log on to Yahoo due to not even knowing the user name, little well a password. The mailing lists chug along sending me mail over pop and it is easy to ignore the ads at the bottom due to using a text mode mail program.
It's a problem with most of these companies, you sign up with one and before you know it, its been bought out by a bigger one and then bought out again, each time usually with more draconian policies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Basically just owns shares of Alibaba at this point as the main source of their value. I mean do they do anything else relevant?