We are in an age when some of the most tech-savvy companies in the world are worrying more and more about the security of their own products and services. In that vein, Yahoo has recently admitted that it is taking additional security measures and using advanced data encryption in order to keep a number of its offerings locked up tight.

The company also said it plans to encrypt services that had not been enjoying the heightened level of security through encryption. Among those services and offerings that Yahoo is planning to upgrade is its Yahoo Messenger application.

The company says it hasn’t been encrypting data all that long, and rather has only been doing it since the beginning of last week. The firm has been one of the most vocal opponents of the practices of the U.S. government when it comes to digital spying and has been advocating reforms quite vociferously. Alex Stamos, the company’s chief information security officer, said Yahoo will look to encrypt all of its users’ data all of the time.

Stamos made it very clear that this goal directly stems from the revelations about the NSA and what they were doing on the Web. Stamos did say that he believes that if anyone has actually been targeted by the U.S. for spying, the government will likely find success. The security expert, who has only been on the job for three weeks, said he still wants to find a way to make it that much more difficult.

Stamos added that anything Yahoo can do in order to protect its users from non-targeted widespread surveillance is the company’s duty. Yahoo is one of the eight companies that petitioned the U.S. government for reforms in the wake of the NSA scandal. Google, Facebook, Apple and others were involved in that particular petition.


Edited by Rory J. Thompson