Internet giants Yahoo! and Google are to join forces to provide Yahoo! Mail users with end-to-end encryption that protects the content of messages from nosy hackers and cyber-spies.
Yahoo! revealed the news at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas yesterday.
The company’s chief information security officer Alex Stamos said Yahoo! will publish the source code for the project later this year, and his group is working with Google “to ensure that (its) implementations of end-to-end encryption are compatible,” TechCrunch reported.
Google had revealed similar efforts for users of its Gmail email service in early June, and starting this fall, Yahoo! Mail users will be able to send emails to other Yahoo! Mail users and Gmail users that look like nonsense to anyone but the sender and recipient, according to Forbes.
These efforts from Yahoo! and Google follow revelations by former CIA contractor Edward Snowden about US government cyberspying that have led technology companies to revisit the strength of their information security measures.
Yahoo! homepage image via Shutterstock
