Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer announced on Monday that the company plans to have all information that moves between its data centers (meaning data from all Yahoo products) encrypted by the end of Q1 2014. It will also offer users an option to encrypt all data flow to and from Yahoo by that same time.
She also said that the company is working with its international mail partners to ensure that Yahoo co-branded Mail accounts are https-enabled.
“As you know, there have been a number of reports over the last six months about the U.S. government secretly accessing user data without the knowledge of tech companies, including Yahoo,” said Mayer. “I want to reiterate what we have said in the past: Yahoo has never given access to our data centers to the NSA or to any other government agency. Ever.”
“There is nothing more important to us than protecting our users’ privacy,” she added.
The announcement is an extension of one the company made about a month ago to make https encryption a default feature of Yahoo Mail and implement 2048-bit encryption keys by January.
This all came after a great deal of criticism about various security practices from the company, including the company’s email address recycling program, which saw sensitive data intended for old account holders sent to new account holders.
Some users also complained about Yahoo deleting legitimate accounts from their contacts.
Image: Yahoo