Yahoo boosts anti-spying security

Yahoo has added more layers of security in its effort to shield people’s online lives from government spying and other snooping.

The measures include a system that encrypts all information being transmitted from one Yahoo data centre to another. The technology is designed to make the emails and other digital information indecipherable to outsiders.

Search requests made from Yahoo’s home page are also now automatically encrypted, and the company is promising to make it more difficult for unauthorised intruders to hack into other services, including video chats, within the next few months.

Yahoo strengthened the security of its email in January.

“Whether or not our users understand it, I feel it’s our responsibility to keep them safe,” said Alex Stamos, Yahoo’s recently hired chief of information security.

Yahoo and other major technology companies such as Google and Microsoft have made online security a top priority during the last 10 months amid a series of revelations about US government programmes.

They are said to have collected personal information about millions of web surfers in an effort to thwart terrorism. The wide-ranging surveillance has been outlined in documents leaked to the media by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.

The technology industry’s indignant response has been driven by financial self-interest as well as an aversion to government prying. Most internet services make money from ads that could be more difficult to sell if spying fears cause their audiences to shrink.

Yahoo, which has more than 800 million worldwide users, vowed late last year to encrypt its data centres by March 31 after reports that the US government had been secretly infiltrating the lines that transfer information overseas.

But the firm still lags behind Google’s encryption efforts. Mr Stamos said it has not been able to move as fast as it wants because many of its services rely on content and ads provided by thousands of other companies, including some that are not convinced they need to encrypt.

The firm said it is confident that it will be able to persuade its content and advertising partners to take the steps needed to enable automatic encryption of those services later this year.

“Some partners already understand this is the way the wind is blowing,” Mr Stamos said. “We are moving to a world where all content is encrypted all the time.”

Yahoo boosts anti-spying security