Yahoo Built a Secret Tool to Scan Your Email Content for US Spy Agency

Users are still dealing with the Yahoo's massive

data breach

that exposed over

1 Billion Yahoo accounts

and there’s another shocking news about the company that, I bet, will blow your mind.

Yahoo might have provided your personal data to United States intelligence agency when required.

Yahoo reportedly built a custom software programmed to secretly scan all of its users' emails for specific information provided by US intelligence officials, according to a report by

Reuters

.

The tool was built in 2015 after company complied with a secret court order to scan hundreds of millions of Yahoo Mail account at the behest of either the NSA or the FBI, according to the report that cites three separate sources who are familiar with the matter.

According to some experts, this is the first time when an American Internet company has agreed to such an extensive demand by a spy agency's demand by searching all incoming emails, examining stored emails or scanning a small number of accounts in real time.

The tool was designed to search for a specific set of character strings within Yahoo emails and "

store them for remote retrieval,

" but it's unclear exactly what the spies were looking for.

In 2014, we also reported about a court document that revealed Yahoo, who fought back against NSA, refused to join

PRISM surveillance program

in 2008 until the US government

threatened Yahoo with $250,000

per day fine.

However, the US intelligence agency approached the company again in 2015 with a court order came in the form of a "classified directive" that was sent to Yahoo's legal team.

'Unhappy' Chief Information Security Officer Left Yahoo Immediately

Weeks later, Yahoo Chief Executive Marissa Mayer decided to obey the order that annoyed some senior executives of the company and led to the resign of Yahoo's Chief Information Security Officer Alex Stamos. Stamos now works for Facebook.

Here's what Yahoo said in a brief statement in response to Reuters demand:

"

Yahoo is a law-abiding company, and complies with the laws of the United States

."

The company declined any further comment.

from The Hacker News http://ift.tt/2duA24j