Google’s Gmail is already using https:// (secure web page technology) and has been working on encrypting all data it moves between data centers since last summer.
Now, with the revelation of NSA’s spying on U.S. and citizens of other countries, both Google and Yahoo are stepping up their efforts to make sure all data in transit is secure and encrypted.
This won’t, of course, prevent the NSA from harvesting whatever it wants, but it will make it more difficult, more time consuming, and more computer intensive. In other words, it will make it more expensive.
So U.S. citizens will be footing the bill for the privilege of being spied upon. To our friends who are citizens of other countries — at least you don’t have to pay the spies to spy on you; we’re paying for it for you!
Yahoo is following Google’s lead — what else is new? – in an effort to make it more difficult for data traversing cyberspace to be harvested by the NSA or anyone else.
Here’s a little tidbit from an article which appeared in The Next Web blog:
Yahoo follows Google in protecting user data, will encrypt information between its data centers by end of Q1 2014
Yahoo today announced plans to beef up security across all its products. As such, the company is making three promises:
* Encrypt all information that moves between its data centers by the end of Q1 2014.
* Offer users an option to encrypt all data flow to/from Yahoo by the end of Q1 2014.
* Work closely with its international Mail partners to ensure that Yahoo co-branded Mail accounts are https-enabled.