After former CIA analyst Edward Snowden revealed in 2013 that the NSA is spying on every American’s internet usage and telephone records, we realized that we are not aware of all the surveillance that is going on. Furthermore, the US government, which, according to Snowden’s report has spied on China and Russia, made a formal accusation that Russia was using hackers to interfere with the American electoral process.
On October 4th, Reuters reported that Yahoo was allowing the NSA or FBI access to its users’ emails, scanning for key words. They have responded by saying that Yahoo is a “law-abiding company” yet later reported that the article was “misleading”. This does not mean that Yahoo did no email scanning. The whole thing becomes even shadier after other tech giants such as Apple and Google said that they never received such instruction.
It has recently been released a report that stating that 500m user accounts had been hacked in 2014 and encrypted passwords, birth dates and phone numbers were retrieved probably by state-sponsored hackers. After that, Verizon asked for a $1bn discount in its acquisition deal for Yahoo’s internet business. It is clear that there have been damages to the company’s image and a lower price is obviously justified, especially when the CEO of Yahoo has been reported to know of this incident since July. The failure to disclose such information would have been enough justification for Verizon to walk out completely.
The real question is whether Yahoo will accept this new offer or not. Reports say that they are fighting back and do not want to accept a lower price. Yahoo’s core internet business is hard to valuate given that the company also owned large stakes in the ecommerce giant Alibaba Yahoo! Japan, valuated at about $45bn. Nevertheless, after the 500m users hack was revealed on September 22nd stocks fell over 4% over the following 2 sessions.
Yahoo has received multiple offers for its internet business that represents just over 1% of global online ad market revenues. Verizon’s all-cash offer is the most appealing at the moment and Yahoo will have to make a decision soon.
On October 4th, Reuters reported that Yahoo was allowing the NSA or FBI access to its users’ emails, scanning for key words. They have responded by saying that Yahoo is a “law-abiding company” yet later reported that the article was “misleading”. This does not mean that Yahoo did no email scanning. The whole thing becomes even shadier after other tech giants such as Apple and Google said that they never received such instruction.
It has recently been released a report that stating that 500m user accounts had been hacked in 2014 and encrypted passwords, birth dates and phone numbers were retrieved probably by state-sponsored hackers. After that, Verizon asked for a $1bn discount in its acquisition deal for Yahoo’s internet business. It is clear that there have been damages to the company’s image and a lower price is obviously justified, especially when the CEO of Yahoo has been reported to know of this incident since July. The failure to disclose such information would have been enough justification for Verizon to walk out completely.
The real question is whether Yahoo will accept this new offer or not. Reports say that they are fighting back and do not want to accept a lower price. Yahoo’s core internet business is hard to valuate given that the company also owned large stakes in the ecommerce giant Alibaba Yahoo! Japan, valuated at about $45bn. Nevertheless, after the 500m users hack was revealed on September 22nd stocks fell over 4% over the following 2 sessions.
Yahoo has received multiple offers for its internet business that represents just over 1% of global online ad market revenues. Verizon’s all-cash offer is the most appealing at the moment and Yahoo will have to make a decision soon.
Yahoo: US NASDAQ quote for the past month updated 10 October 11:00 GMT
Sebastiao Carvalho Martins