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Yahoo Marissa Mayer

Yahoo faces court claim in California that it illegally shared e-mail content

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By Noel Young, Correspondent

August 14, 2014 | 3 min read

A California judge has ordered Yahoo to face claims that it illegally shared the content of emails in the latest ruling to hold Internet companies accountable for how they convert users' personal data into advertising dollars.

Marissa Mayer: Another problem

Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose ruled in March that Google's privacy policy was vague and possibly misleading about how it mined emails for information. Google later changed its user terms, said Bloomberg.

Now Koh and her colleagues face the task of reconciling wiretap laws written in the landline-phone era with users' concerns about how companies use the troves of data generated when people send emails and surf online.

The case is just another problem to land on the desk of Yahoo CEO Marissa Meyer.

Koh is allowing email users to pursue Yahoo's alleged violation of a California anti-wiretapping and anti- eavesdropping law that prohibits unauthorised interceptions of communications.

The judge rejected Yahoo's claims that the law couldn't be applied because emails it received en-route to a recipient were in electronic storage rather than in transit.

Concluding she couldn't know that until the case was more developed and the two sides exchanged information, Koh said the lawsuit could go forward on that allegation.

Koh granted Yahoo's request to throw out an invasion of privacy claim under California's constitution. She also dismissed a federal wiretap claim that the company's terms of service don't notify users that their e-mails with non-subscribers of Yahoo Mail would be intercepted, scanned and analyzed to create user profiles and for advertising purposes.

The judge also set aside a claim that Yahoo failed to properly disclose it would collect and store the content of users' emails for future use.

Koh permitted users to go forward with an allegation brought under a different provision in wiretap law that Yahoo illegally disclosed to third parties the content of emails between Yahoo Mail users and people with non-Yahoo addresses.

Yahoo Marissa Mayer

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