We all know how the U.S. government managed to get everyone in the world angry over the NSA’s spying programs, and that includes its own citizens and corporations. Some companies such as Microsoft, Yahoo and Google have felt strong pressure to distance themselves from this spying program and each is trying to regain public trust.
In a bid to show that user info is truly private, both Google and Yahoo have been racing to encrypt their services. Meanwhile a consortium of companies - including Microsoft and Apple - have been calling for more transparency from the NSA and the U.S. government.
Yahoo is now saying it’s going to encrypt not only its e-mail service, but all data sent to and from Yahoo data servers. Users will have the option to turn on full encryption on their Yahoo accounts by April 2014 when the roll-out will be complete.
Of course this is beneficial for users, but some question whether it’s actually enough. While Yahoo and other companies’ encryption efforts offer an important extra layer of protection against regular hackers, it’s not hard to imagine that an organization such as the NSA with virtually unlimited money and power has the resources necessary to bypass any such protection.
And while Yahoo’s CEO, Marissa Mayer, has repeatedly stated that her company has never collaborated with any government agency and given them access to its datacenters, earlier reports claimed that many big-named companies had created special backdoors in their security systems so the NSA could easily access whatever data it needed.
As we mentioned above, this is a good and beneficial move on Yahoo’s part, but many of us are left wondering if it will actually make a difference.
Source: BBC