Google and Microsoft say email services are spy-free following Yahoo report
Google’s says it has never received spying requests, but if it did, it would simply say ‘no way’
Microsoft and Google want to make it clear that their email services, Outlook, Hotmail and Gmail, are safe from US government spies.
The two companies issued the following statements to CNBC, following a Reuters report revealing that Internet giant Yahoo secretly scanned customer emails for US intelligence officials, according to reporter Joseph Menn’s sources.
“We have never engaged in the secret scanning of email traffic like what has been reported today about Yahoo .” — a Microsoft spokesperson said in an emailed response to CNBC.
A spokesperson from Alphabet’s Google’s issued this statement to CNBC: “We’ve never received such a request, but if we did, our response would be simple: ‘no way’.”
According to Reuters, citing two former employees and a third person with knowledge of the events, Yahoo scanned hundreds of millions of email accounts at the bidding of the National Security Agency or FBI, in order to comply with a classified US government directive.
The company also reportedly built a software custom tool to monitor all of its users incoming emails for certain information specified by U.S. intelligence agents, according to Reuters sources.
