08 December 2009

yahoo lawful spying guide hits the net

mathaba via rense

click here to download our copy 17 page .pdf [125 kb]
or from cryptome or mathaba

some are interpreting this document called "yahoo compliance guide for law enforcement" (posted from cryptome.org at 02 december 2009) which details yahoo's policies towards answering subpoenas, service of process, preservation requests, search warrants and the like as well as yahoo's price list for providing same, as proof that yahoo is spying on its subscribers for the government.

in a perfect world no records would be kept at all, true. in reality though some customer information has to be stored for at least as long as your account is active or not closed.

yahoo claims that they eventually delete most of the information except:
Subscriber information supplied by the user at the time of registration, including name, location, date account created, and services used.

IP addresses associated with log-ins to a user account are available for up to one year.

Registration IP address data available for IDs registered since 1999.
we see a problem with the first and the last one. looks like yahoo keeps your signup information forever. thats not right.

a lot of the other information is server records that are generated when your computer sends a request to yahoo. in other words its information thats going to exist for a time anyway because of the way that the internet works.

maybe we're missing something big here but we really dont see any need to be especially frightened about using email.

what we come away with after reading yahoo's policies is to never signup for an email account with your real name and address and if you have an important email print it out and delete it. these are things that people should already know.

however, if you use flickr, yahoo groups, yahoo chat or yahoo instant messenger, yahoo web messenger, geocities (now closed), yahoo answers, yahoo profiles or your email address ends in @sbcglobal.net you might have some other concerns.

no one said that you can use email to anonymously send how to make a nooklar bomb info around. what about those adults who use email etc to lure kids for sex or kidnapping? in most of the reports we've read about those cases after the parents discover it and go to the police the email & ip information is only hours to a couple of days old.

if you used the phone or postal mail to fuck around you would expect to be caught eventually, so why then should you expect email to be any different?
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see also
eric hufschmid
nsa should spy on zionists
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Posted by wst... at 00:07

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