Yahoo! will encrypt data across all its products in 2014 to thwart NSA spying

Yahoo! has announced that it intends to protect user privacy on its services, especially to keep out snooping by the NSA. The Internet company will now encrypt all its internal data across all Yahoo! products in 2014.

In a blog post announcing the company’s intention to introduce encryption across all its products, CEO Marissa Meyer wrote, “We’ve worked hard over the years to earn our users’ trust and we fight hard to preserve it.” She said that while over the last six months reports of the US government secretly accessing user data without the knowledge of tech companies had been cropping up, Yahoo! reiterates that it has never taken part in it. Neither the NSA nor any other government agency was given access to Yahoo’s data centres ever.

Safety first!

Yahoo! had in the past announced its intention to make Yahoo! Mail more secure by introducing https (SSL- Secure Sockets Layer) encryption with a 2048-bit key across its network. This is to be put in place by January 8, 2014. However, the Internet giant has announced that it will extend the efforts across all its products, in the light of the NSA snooping.

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“As we have said before, we will continue to evaluate how we can protect our users’ privacy and their data. We appreciate, and certainly do not take for granted, the trust our users place in us,” Meyer wrote.

Essentially, this will mean all information that moves between Yahoo’s data centres will be encrypted by the end of the first quarter next year. The same deadline will be met while offering users an option to encrypt all data flow to and from Yahoo! The company will also work closely with its international Mail partners to ensure Yahoo! co-branded Mail accounts are also https-enabled.