Latest NSA revelation is black eye for Yahoo

The latest revelation that the National Security Agency collected millions of contact lists from the leading online messaging services is a particular black eye for Yahoo, security and privacy experts said.

During a single day last year, the NSA's Special Source Operations branch collected 444,743 e-mail address books from Yahoo, 105,068 from Microsoft's Hotmail, 82,857 from Facebook, 33,697 from Google's Gmail service and 22,881 from unspecified other providers, the Washington Post reported. Those figures, described as a typical daily intake, correspond to a rate of more than 250 million a year, the newspaper added, citing an internal NSA presentation leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The NSA may collect so many more address books from Yahoo than other big services because Yahoo, unlike those other providers, has left connections to its users unencrypted by default, the Washington Post said.