Yahoo now offers SSL

By providing users Secure Socket Layer connection, Yahoo finally catches up with Microsoft and Google on Webmail security

By: nestor e. arellano
Computing Canada (09 Jan 2013)

An international digital rights group is cheering Yahoo Inc. for starting the New Near on the right foot by finally providing users with secure online connection.

“We’re really happy that Yahoo is starting 2013 right by letting Yahoo Mail users use HTTPS to access their e-mail accounts securely,” the non-profit Electronic Frontier Foundation said in a statement yesterday.

For now, users who want to activate HTTPS on Yahoo Mail need to enable in in their account by clicking on the option.

HTTPS, or hypertext transfer protocol secure is a widely used communications protocol for secure communications over a computer network. HTTPS is a result of layering the hypertext transfer protocol on top of the Secure Socket Layer (SSL) – a cryptographic protocol that provides communication security over the Internet.

SSL encryption has become a critical security layer for protecting e-commerce transactions, bank account and credit card numbers against hackers seeking to grab sensitive or personal financial information on the Web.

“Without HTTPS, anybody on a Wi-Fi network can real all the data sent to or received from a Web site (for example, the full text of all the e-mail that Yahoo Mail users sent or received),” the EFF said.

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Other firms such as Microsoft Corp. and Google Inc. have been using SSL. Google for instance, deployed SSL in 2010. With Yahoo’s deployment of the technology AOL Inc. is now the lone major Internet company not using SSL.

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