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Yahoo, Bucking Industry, Scans Emails for Data To Sell Advertisers (wsj.com)
The U.S. tech industry has largely declared it is off limits to scan emails for information to sell to advertisers. Yahoo still sees the practice as a potential gold mine. From a report: Yahoo's owner, the Oath unit of Verizon Communications has been pitching a service to advertisers that analyzes more than 200 million Yahoo Mail inboxes and the rich user data they contain, searching for clues about what products those users might buy, said people who have attended Oath's presentations as well as current and former employees of the company. Oath said the practice extends to AOL Mail, which it also owns. Together, they constitute the only major U.S. email provider that scans user inboxes for marketing purposes.
Together, they constitute the only major U.S. email provider that [admits that it] scans user inboxes for marketing purposes.
Warning: This signature may offend some viewers.
Many people in Europe have Yahoo adresses. Some will even have Yahoo.com and not e.g. Yahoo.fr or Yahoo.co.uk adresses.
So what is 4% of their annual turnover? (Hint: GDPR)
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Ironically, the only e-mail messages that come into my (largely defunct) Yahoo account are from... ummm... advertisers. That is to say, that's the address I give out to websites and/or companies that I never actually want to hear from again. So, did I buy something from those companies? Maybe... but just as likely not. So sure, Verizon; knock yourself out -- though, I have little faith that you're going to get much real value out of scraping my inbox.
(Also... it baffles my mind that there are people who still use legacy AOL accounts.)