Yahoo Reportedly Hands Over User Data To Australian Government

It has been alleged that Yahoo (with a spanking new logo) has been handing over private and personal information that affect hundreds of its users to Australian government agents, according to a recently revealed transparency report. Apparently, in the first half of 2013 itself, Australian government agents have already performed 704 requests for access to data that are part of 799 Yahoo accounts or users. Of course, full access to all 799 accounts were not granted, but rather, only 11 of those requests were approved of. Just what kind of information exchanged hands? Well, we are referring to the content of Yahoo emails, uploaded files and Yahoo address, calendar and notepad entries.

Not only that, Yahoo has also allegedly passed on so-called “non-content data”, as part of a response to 305 of the requests, which in turn would allow government agents to gain access to information including the names, locations, IP addresses, login details and billing information belonging to Yahoo account holders. Out of the 799 requests, Yahoo rejected 242 of them, and did not find any data in 146 of the cases. Compared to US government agents, Australian agents were pretty “mild” as their US counterparts made 12,444 requests for data which were related to 40,322 Yahoo accounts or users in the first six months of 2013. Regardless, do you think that one request alone is already too many?

Edwin Kee
Categories: Computers
Tags: Yahoo