Yahoo to Encrypt All Products Amid NSA Spying

Yahoo is taking further steps to prevent NSA snooping: The company will encrypt all its products, and soon. In a blog post yesterday, CEO Marissa Mayer announced that by the end of Q1 next year, users will be able to have all data going to and from Yahoo encrypted if they so choose, while all information moving between Yahoo data centers will be encrypted.

Yahoo announced last month that https encryption for Yahoo Mail would be on by default as of January 8; that news came on the same day that the Washington Post reported that the NSA had obtained access to some 444,743 Yahoo user address books in just a day—compared to 105,068 from Hotmail and 33, 697 from Gmail, PC World notes. "We will continue to evaluate how we can protect our users' privacy and their data," Mayer posted. "We appreciate, and certainly do not take for granted, the trust our users place in us." (More Yahoo stories.)