Advertisement
Yahoo
TechTech Trends

Yahoo stops email service for mainland users in final retreat from China

  • Yahoo Mail told mainland Chinese users over the weekend that they could no longer send or receive email after February 28
  • The move marks the US company’s final retreat from China amid tightened data regulations in the country

Reading Time:2 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
The Yahoo logo is seen outside of the company’s offices in Santa Clara, California. The company will no longer provide email services to mainland Chinese users starting on February 28, 2022. Photo: AP Photo
Iris Deng

US internet company Yahoo said it would officially stop providing email services to mainland Chinese users from February 28 onwards, following its announcement in November that it was withdrawing from China, where foreign websites such as Google’s search engine and Twitter have been unavailable for years.

Advertisement

After Monday, Yahoo Mail users “will no longer be able to send or receive new emails from mainland China or download data”, the Sunnyvale, California-based company said in an email sent to mainland users on Saturday, urging them to back up emails, contacts and calendar events in their accounts before the deadline.

The company also stressed that Yahoo Mail would remain available for global users outside mainland China, although it did not elaborate on why it was pulling out of the market.

Yahoo Mail’s retreat comes after the company announced late last year that its suite of services would no longer be accessible on the mainland. By then, Yahoo’s weather app and news page, as well as the mainland Chinese version of its consumer tech blog Engadget were already unavailable.
The move came amid tightened data and user privacy regulations in China. They include the Personal Information Protection Law, one of the world’s toughest on personal data security, which has been compared to the General Data Protection Regulation in the European Union.
Along with the Cybersecurity Law, which took effect in May 2017, and the Data Security Law, which was implemented in September, these regulations have provided the Chinese government with a range of tools to restrict cross-border data flows and keep data within the country.
Advertisement
Microsoft’s LinkedIn, the professional social media network, pulled its global platform from China last year, citing “a significantly more challenging operating environment and greater compliance requirements” in the country.
Advertisement