NSA Targets Yahoo Users Most

[Nobunaga Oda]

5:22 pm
Feb 3, 2014

NSA Targets Yahoo Users Most

By Danny Yadron

New data released Monday by tech industry leaders shine new light on how many consumers get caught up in the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs.

And during the first half of last year, the U.S. government appeared to have a particular hunger for content from Yahoo accounts. The company fielded national security requests for content from 30,000 to 30,999 accounts between January and June of last year. That’s about twice as many as Microsoft, which came in at No. 2.

Below, The Wall Street Journal compiled the data released this past week from Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo and Apple, which was allowed to report its numbers in smaller bands of 250 because it lumps a few national security categories together.

Under a deal with the Justice Department last week, companies for the first time can disclose how many requests they receive under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA. The court that issues these requests normally does so in secret.

But still, why Yahoo?

The company had the second most popular webmail service worldwide as of December 2013, according to ComScore data, after Google, which received requests for 9,000-9,999 accounts during the same period. A ComScore spokesman said the new companies are neck and neck in the U.S., which means Google’s Gmail has more users globally.

In an email, a Yahoo spokeswoman said the company has a “very large global user-base” and that even if the government requests data from a nonexistent email address, it still counts in the total.