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privacy policy - Google vs Yahoo/OATH
Sunday, April 29th, 2018 11:56 pmYahoo Mail (aka OATH) has a new Terms of Service and Privacy Policy starting May 25. The parts of the privacy policy which pertain to how Yahoo may access the information contained in emails disturbs me.
This page appears to have Yahoo's legacy privacy policy, dated June 2017. Based on what that page says, some or all of the policies listed below may not be new, but I'm not sure.
I was wondering if Yahoo's policies are really much different from Google's TOS and Privacy Policy. So I checked.
Google:
Our automated systems analyze your content (including emails) to provide you personally relevant product features, such as customized search results, tailored advertising, and spam and malware detection. This analysis occurs as the content is sent, received, and when it is stored.
Yahoo/OATH:
OATH Privacy Center, main
Oath analyzes and stores all communications content, including email content from incoming and outgoing mail. This allows us to deliver, personalize and develop relevant features, content, advertising and Services.
OATH FAQ for Communications Products
Oath’s automated systems may analyze all content (such as Mail and Messenger content including instant messages and SMS messages) to detect, among other things, certain words and phrases (we call them "keywords") within these communications. This analysis may occur on all content as it is sent, received, and when it is stored, including communications content from Services synced with your account.
...
Our automated systems may analyze all communications content (such as Mail and Messenger content including instant messages and SMS messages) and all photos and other content uploaded to your account
...
For example, after automatically removing any information that on its own could reasonably identify the recipient, we may manually review certain commercial communications to develop tools to assist the automated scanning process, improve segmentation and other automated functions and create generic templates of such documents (e.g., using common language to identify the elements of an airline receipt). Oath employees may review the templates to improve our services and our personalization of your experience.
The automated analysis and storage of all content can include information within or about the content you provide, such as photos, attachments and other communications. We may collect information about the photos and videos uploaded, including EXIF data. Exchangeable Image File Format (“EXIF”) data is a record of the settings and other relevant metadata inserted by a camera or device when you take a photo or video, such as camera or device type, aperture, shutter speed, focal length, and location , among other information.
We also may use image recognition algorithms for the purposes bulleted above. For example, the algorithms might identify and tag scenes, color, best crop coordinates, text, actions, objects, or public figures.
It also disturbs me to read how much information Yahoo may be collecting about me from multiple sources:
OATH Privacy Center, main
We collect information from your devices (computers, mobile phones, tablets, etc.), including information about how you interact with our Services and those of our third-party partners and information that allows us to recognize and associate your activity across devices and Services. This information includes device specific identifiers and information such as IP address, cookie information, mobile device and advertising identifiers, browser version, operating system type and version, mobile network information, device settings, and software data. We may recognize your devices to provide you with personalized experiences and advertising across the devices you use.
...
This information also includes the kind of content or ads served, viewed or clicked on; the frequency and duration of your activities; the sites or apps you used before accessing our Services and where you went next; whether you engaged with specific content or ads; and whether you went on to visit an advertiser's website, downloaded an advertiser’s app, purchased a product or service advertised, or took other actions.
...
Information from Others. We collect information about you when we receive it from other users, third-parties, and affiliates, such as:
When you connect your account to third-party services or sign in using a third-party partner (like Facebook or Twitter).
From publicly-available sources.
From advertisers about your experiences or interactions with their offerings.
When we obtain information from third-parties or other companies, such as those that use our Services. This may include your activity on other sites and apps as well as information those third-parties provide to you or us.
We may also receive information from Verizon and will honor the choices Verizon customers have made about the uses of this information when we receive and use this data.
...
We also may use the information we have about you for the following purposes:
...
Associate your activity across our Services and your different devices as well as associate any accounts you may use across Oath Services together. We may associate activity and accounts under a single user ID.
Automated scanning emails for certain keywords is something I was aware that Google has been doing for quite a while. But the idea of mail providers scanning email image attachments, and applying facial recognition to see who is in the images, etc., is new to me*. I know that Facebook does that for images uploaded to its site, but I didn't know that email providers would do it too, for images attached to emails. And I hadn't thought much about how much info so many different companies may be sharing with each other to get a "big picture" about a person's activities, as opposed to each company just maintaining its own small set of data for its own analysis, of what people do on their particular website.
*Updated, 2018/05/20: OATH's pages only specifically mention "image recognition", which must mean to see what is in the photos. So they may or may not use "facial recognition" to see who is in photos. But based on the above, the image recognition may recognize "public figures", so it probably does include facial recognition too.
This page appears to have Yahoo's legacy privacy policy, dated June 2017. Based on what that page says, some or all of the policies listed below may not be new, but I'm not sure.
I was wondering if Yahoo's policies are really much different from Google's TOS and Privacy Policy. So I checked.
Google:
Our automated systems analyze your content (including emails) to provide you personally relevant product features, such as customized search results, tailored advertising, and spam and malware detection. This analysis occurs as the content is sent, received, and when it is stored.
Yahoo/OATH:
OATH Privacy Center, main
Oath analyzes and stores all communications content, including email content from incoming and outgoing mail. This allows us to deliver, personalize and develop relevant features, content, advertising and Services.
OATH FAQ for Communications Products
Oath’s automated systems may analyze all content (such as Mail and Messenger content including instant messages and SMS messages) to detect, among other things, certain words and phrases (we call them "keywords") within these communications. This analysis may occur on all content as it is sent, received, and when it is stored, including communications content from Services synced with your account.
...
Our automated systems may analyze all communications content (such as Mail and Messenger content including instant messages and SMS messages) and all photos and other content uploaded to your account
...
For example, after automatically removing any information that on its own could reasonably identify the recipient, we may manually review certain commercial communications to develop tools to assist the automated scanning process, improve segmentation and other automated functions and create generic templates of such documents (e.g., using common language to identify the elements of an airline receipt). Oath employees may review the templates to improve our services and our personalization of your experience.
The automated analysis and storage of all content can include information within or about the content you provide, such as photos, attachments and other communications. We may collect information about the photos and videos uploaded, including EXIF data. Exchangeable Image File Format (“EXIF”) data is a record of the settings and other relevant metadata inserted by a camera or device when you take a photo or video, such as camera or device type, aperture, shutter speed, focal length, and location , among other information.
We also may use image recognition algorithms for the purposes bulleted above. For example, the algorithms might identify and tag scenes, color, best crop coordinates, text, actions, objects, or public figures.
It also disturbs me to read how much information Yahoo may be collecting about me from multiple sources:
OATH Privacy Center, main
We collect information from your devices (computers, mobile phones, tablets, etc.), including information about how you interact with our Services and those of our third-party partners and information that allows us to recognize and associate your activity across devices and Services. This information includes device specific identifiers and information such as IP address, cookie information, mobile device and advertising identifiers, browser version, operating system type and version, mobile network information, device settings, and software data. We may recognize your devices to provide you with personalized experiences and advertising across the devices you use.
...
This information also includes the kind of content or ads served, viewed or clicked on; the frequency and duration of your activities; the sites or apps you used before accessing our Services and where you went next; whether you engaged with specific content or ads; and whether you went on to visit an advertiser's website, downloaded an advertiser’s app, purchased a product or service advertised, or took other actions.
...
Information from Others. We collect information about you when we receive it from other users, third-parties, and affiliates, such as:
When you connect your account to third-party services or sign in using a third-party partner (like Facebook or Twitter).
From publicly-available sources.
From advertisers about your experiences or interactions with their offerings.
When we obtain information from third-parties or other companies, such as those that use our Services. This may include your activity on other sites and apps as well as information those third-parties provide to you or us.
We may also receive information from Verizon and will honor the choices Verizon customers have made about the uses of this information when we receive and use this data.
...
We also may use the information we have about you for the following purposes:
...
Associate your activity across our Services and your different devices as well as associate any accounts you may use across Oath Services together. We may associate activity and accounts under a single user ID.
Automated scanning emails for certain keywords is something I was aware that Google has been doing for quite a while. But the idea of mail providers scanning email image attachments, and applying facial recognition to see who is in the images, etc., is new to me*. I know that Facebook does that for images uploaded to its site, but I didn't know that email providers would do it too, for images attached to emails. And I hadn't thought much about how much info so many different companies may be sharing with each other to get a "big picture" about a person's activities, as opposed to each company just maintaining its own small set of data for its own analysis, of what people do on their particular website.
*Updated, 2018/05/20: OATH's pages only specifically mention "image recognition", which must mean to see what is in the photos. So they may or may not use "facial recognition" to see who is in photos. But based on the above, the image recognition may recognize "public figures", so it probably does include facial recognition too.