Remember the lawsuit against Yahoo! for scanning non-users’ emails for advertising purposes? David Kravets writes:
Days ago, a Silicon Valley federal judge signed off (PDF) on a settlement (PDF). The lawyers won, they were awarded $4 million (£3 million), and the public got nothing. What’s more, the settlement allows Yahoo to continue to scan e-mails without non-Yahoo users’ consent. (Yahoo Mail customers have granted consent to the scanning as a condition of using the service.) The major change the lawsuit produced was that Yahoo is agreeing to scan the e-mail while it’s at rest on its servers instead of while the mail is in transit. This, according to the settlement, satisfies the California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA) claims. The deal spells out that Yahoo only has to do this for three years, but Yahoo said it would continue with the new scanning protocol after the three years expire.
Read more on Ars Technica.