Yahoo is reprtedly planning to join Google to create a secure email system by next year that could make it nearly impossible for government officials or hackers to scan users messages.
It's notable Yahoo has already altered its email process so users adopting encryption type messages in a separate window, that prevents even Yahoo from reading user messages as they are typed. Yahoo announced default HTTPS encryption for Yahoo mail users in Jan 2014 after Washington Post alleged that the NSA has been intercepting traffic between Yahoo’s servers as a means of collecting data on its targets.
The move comes in the wake of Edward Snowden revelations last year about the National Security Agency's mass surveillance programs. Tech giants Google, Microsoft and Facebook Inc all moved to encrypt internal traffic after revelations by Snowden that the spy agency hacked into their connections overseas.
Google has made Gmail more secure by using an encrypted HTTPS connection for its 425 million users. The company has recently announced a Chrome plug-in that will enable end-to-end encryption for web-based email services. The internet giant says that the new plug-in will let “anyone” enable end-to-end email encryption “through their existing web-based email provider.” Google is also encouraging website developers to make their sites more secure for visitors and has announced that encrypted websites now will fare better in its search results.
The move would bring an advanced privacy technology to widely used consumer service and would help secure emails of the 425 million Gmail users and Yahoo's 100 million email users.
Source: WSJ