Yahoo/AOL Mail Privacy Policy Change Lets Them Read Your Email/Messages

[Calliegirl]

If you use Yahoo or AOL Mail, their privacy policy has recently changed and it now allows them to scan your emails, messages, attachments, pictures and files for information for ad targeting and financial information. They say they will strip out personal information but can't guarantee all of it will be removed before a person looks at it.

I didn't accept their terms when I checked my mail (it's still an option right now) and forwarded any important mail to a new email account through a different provider. I also changed email subscriptions on anything important and deleted everything else. If you plan to do something similar, do not accept the new policy yet. A lot of people have been locked out of their email accounts when they did click on it ( a bug I guess?).

Anyway, I just wanted to give a heads up for anyone interested.

...When we logged in to a Yahoo Mail account on April 13, we were greeted with the privacy policy you see below (Jason Kint had pointed to the policy earlier on Twitter). In it, Oath notes that it has the right to read your emails, instant messages, posts, photos and even look at your message attachments. And it might share that data with parent company Verizon, too...

...
There’s also this paragraph from the Oath policy:

How Does Oath Treat Information From Financial Institutions?
Oath aims to offer products and services of interest to our users and to that end Oath may analyze user content around certain interactions with financial institutions. This enables Oath to build features which facilitate interactions with such institutions as well as offer more relevant ads when users are served ads by the Oath network. Oath leverages information financial institutions are allowed to send over email (which are governed by regulations on what financial institutions may send over email to ensure user privacy). Regulated financial institutions are required to send sensitive information via other means, such as brokerage statements.

In other words, emails related to your banking and financial transactions appear to be equally in the crosshairs of Oath’s ad targeting engine...

Yahoo, AOL's New Privacy Policy Allows Them To Read Your Emails