Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) e-mail customers are livid over the fact that the company may have shared sensitive data to government agencies.
The National Security Agency (NSA) and the Federal Investigation Bureau (FBI) reportedly asked the tech giant’s legal team to create a software that would read its users’ e-mail. Yahoo would then share certain data with these agencies.
There were a number of specific characters that the agencies were looking for, and it is unclear what these were or what purpose the NSA had with this move. The move apparently would unveil the information of all arriving messages rather than a select few accounts.
Certain sources believe this would be the first case of a U.S. tech company agreeing to a government agency’s demand to spy on its users. Yahoo responded by claiming it is a law-abiding corporation, without giving details on whether or not it spied on its users.
Two former employees claim this move is the reason why some high-ranking company employees left Yahoo within the last couple of years, including Chief Information Security Officer Alex Stamos who is now the security boss at Facebook, Inc. (NASDAQ:FB).
YHOO stock is up 0.1% Tuesday.
The opinions contained in this column are solely those of the writer.
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