Yahoo announced on Thursday that it would follow Google's plan in creating an encrypted email system for its users.
The encryption for the emails will make it impossible for hackers and other third party access points to crack the emails and store them. In June, Internet giant Google also announced that they will soon start a project to make their email system more hack-proof. Yahoo's announcement sparked excitement over email users for both Yahoo and Google command the highest number of email accounts today. Yahoo has 273 million email users while Google has 366 million users as of December 2013.
The two search engine giants stated that the encryption will be an optional tool for their users. It can be activated and deactivated anytime.
If both companies are successful in this venture, it will be a huge step in protecting the consumer's email accounts. This will also show how tech companies revolutionize their strategies after whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed how the government has been spying on its people through email, text messaging, calls, and Internet browsing history.
Yahoo's encryption system will primarily use a PGP encryption, a form of encryption no one has cracked yet. In this encryption system, each email user will be given an encryption key that should be stored on all of their devices which they use to access their email.
In an interview, Alex Stamos, Yahoo's chief information security officer told the Wall Street Journal that introducing this new security tool to the public might be quite challenging. One of the biggest hurdles that they have to face is the fact that PGP encryption only protects the content of the message, not the other metadata such as the message source and the email's subject line.
"We have to make it to clear to people it is not secret you're emailing your priest," Stamos said in an interview at the Black Hat security conference, as quoted by the Wall Street Journal. "But the content of what you're emailing him is secret."
In addition, USA Today reported that Google will begin ranking encrypted sites higher than those that don't have encryptions. An encrypted site has an HTTPS address while a non-encrypted is the regular HTTP.
