Information notice for people who do not use Yahoo services

Information notice for people who do not use Yahoo services

Version 1.0, last updated July 2023.

1. Who we are

We, Yahoo EMEA Limited are a technology and media company established under the laws of Ireland and with headquarters at Floor 5-7 Point Square, North Wall Quay, Dublin 1, Ireland.

We provide consumer services and digital advertising services (our services) in Europe (including the United Kingdom), the Middle East and Africa. We collect information from people using our services and use that information as we describe in the Yahoo privacy policy.

Even if you don't use our services, we may process some information about you.

This information notice applies when:

  • someone using our consumer services, like Yahoo Mail, gives us your information;
  • your details are included in a search made through our search services;
  • your information appears in the results of a search made through our search services; or
  • your information appears in comments made by users.

This notice explains what information we collect, how we use and share it, and how you can control what we do with it.

Click on + on the right to learn more about how we process your information.

When our users share your information with us

We provide email services through Yahoo and AOL Mail. We also provide services where users can carry out internet searches and comment on articles or videos that we display on our sites and apps. Your information may be included in our users’ emails (as senders or recipients), search results or comments. For example, emails, searches or comments may include your contact information (such as your name, address, phone number or email address), documents or images of or about you.

In all cases, we do not control the content of our users’ emails, searches or comments.

We use your information in different ways, as described below.

Information from emails and contacts

What we collect or receive, and how we use it

Why we process the information and our legal basis (valid legal reason) for using it

We collect and store the content of emails sent and received through our Yahoo and AOL Mail services. We also collect supporting information about the emails (other than their content).

For example, if a Yahoo Mail user sends you an email, or you send an email to a Yahoo email address, we will process your email address to enable the email to be sent.

The information we collect includes your contact details, personal information in the email, the email subject line, the time emails are sent and received, and the email addresses.

We and the people benefiting from our services have a legitimate interest in our email services working well.

We use the information to provide the services and features that Yahoo and AOL Mail users request, and for safety and security purposes (such as scanning email attachments for security threats, to keep our services safe, secure, and efficient).

We sometimes collect and store Yahoo and AOL Mail users’ email address books, which could include your name and nickname, email address, phone number, postal address, work details and birthday.

We and the people benefiting from our services have a legitimate interest in Yahoo and AOL users connecting efficiently with their contacts.
Information in search queries

What we collect or receive, and how we use it

Why we process the information and our legal basis (valid legal reason) for using it

We collect and process search queries made on our sites and apps, and on partners’ sites and apps that use our search products. Those search queries could include personal information about you. We process search queries to provide our users with search results.

We and the people benefiting from our services have a legitimate interest in our search services working well, including how easy it is to use the services, and how helpful and effective they are.
Information in search results

What we collect or receive, and how we use it

Why we process the information and our legal basis (valid legal reason) for using it

We process information in search queries in order to provide search results. Those search results may contain information about you.

You can ask for specific URLs to no longer appear in the results that are returned after a search of your name through our search services. (You can make this request by visiting our right to be forgotten page.)

We have a legitimate interest in providing search results to our users.
Information in users’ comments

What we collect or receive, and how we use it

Why we process the information and our legal basis (valid legal reason) for using it

We display comments that users post on our sites and apps. Comments may include information about you (such as your name), and we process the information to make sure comments are in line with our community guidelines.

We have a legitimate interest in providing features to engage our users and to make sure comments are in line with our community guidelines.

Below we have listed the categories of partners we share your information with and why we share it.

Click on + on the right to learn more about these partners and why we share your information with them.

Partner category

Why we share your information

Yahoo companies

We share your information with other Yahoo companies for a variety of purposes, including to:

  • provide our users with our consumer services and digital advertising services
  • protect our consumer services and systems, by preventing and detecting unauthorised access or use
  • understand how our consumer services and digital advertising services work, and
  • improve existing services and features, and develop new ones.

Processors acting on our behalf

We share your information with processors that work on our behalf and process your information as instructed by us. Processors include:

  • providers of cloud storage
  • providers of our search services; and
  • security partners and service providers.

Government agencies or other third parties

We share information with third parties and law-enforcement agencies to do the following:

  • keep to a court order or similar legal procedure, or to prevent fraud or other illegal activity
  • protect the rights, property and safety of us and our users. For example, we may provide information (such as your information in email inboxes or address books) to law-enforcement agencies in an emergency where someone’s safety is at risk
  • detect, investigate or tackle, for example, fraud, illegal activity, security issues and technical issues. This includes sharing information with other technology companies to protect against security threats
  • meet legal or regulatory requirements, and
  • exercise our legal rights, including investigating cases of our Terms of Service being broken.

New owners

If the ownership or control of all or part of Yahoo (or one or more of our services) changes or is proposed to change as a result of a merger, acquisition, or sale of any assets, we may transfer your information to the new (or prospective) owner or controller.

4. How long we keep your information

We generally store your information for as long as is necessary for the following purposes.

  • The purposes described in section 2 of this notice (How and when we process your information).
  • To provide our consumer services to our users. For example, we keep the content of users’ emails accounts for as long as their accounts are active. (Users must log in to their email account at least once every 12 months to keep their accounts active.)
  • Other legitimate purposes, such as meeting our legal obligations and investigating whether our Terms of Service have been broken.
  • Security purposes (such as scanning email attachments for security threats, to keep our services safe, secure, and efficient).

In some cases, we store your information for longer (for example when we need to keep to legal requirements).

The period we keep your information for depends on factors such as:

  • the type of information;
  • why it has been collected and is being processed;
  • business needs (for example, creating backups so we can restore our services to our users after a disaster); and
  • any legal requirements we must meet.

For example, we would keep users’ email address books for as long as their Yahoo or AOL Mail account is active.

5. Transferring your information

We work with Yahoo companies (our affiliates) and other companies in different countries. These countries may have privacy and data-protection laws which are different from those in your country. When we transfer information described in section 2 above (How and when we process your Information) to our affiliates or companies in other countries, we make sure that safeguards are in place to protect the information. The safeguards we rely on are adequacy decisions (a European Commission or United Kingdom formal decision on whether another country provides an equivalent level of data protection) and standard contractual clauses adopted by the European Commission or the United Kingdom.

The countries we transfer personal information to include Australia, the United Kingdom, India, the United States, Canada, Singapore, Taiwan and Israel.

We may rely on other conditions to transfer your information, such as when the transfer is necessary:

  • to keep to a contract that has been entered into, in your interests, between the data controller and another party
  • to establish, bring or defend legal claims
  • for important reasons of public interest, or
  • to protect the vital interests of a person.

If you have any questions about the standard contractual clauses, or would like to get a copy of them, you can contact us using our privacy form or the contact information provided in the section below.

6. Exercising your privacy rights

a. Your rights

You have rights over your information, including the right to see (access), correct and delete (erase) your information, and to restrict or object to the processing of your information.

Whether you can exercise these rights may be limited if:

  • we do not have enough information to identify you
  • we must meet specific legal obligations
  • your request would affect another person’s rights and freedoms, or
  • the information is needed to make or defend a legal claim.

If you want to exercise any of your rights, please fill in our privacy form.

b. Raise a concern

If you have any questions or concerns about how your information is processed, you can contact our Data Protection Officer by emailing dpo-contact@yahooinc.com or by writing to us at the address provided in the how to contact us section below. If you are not satisfied with our response, you also have the right to make a complaint to the data protection regulator in the country you live or work in. You can find your local data protection regulator on the European Data Protection Board’s website.

If you live in Switzerland, you can contact the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC).

If you live in the UK you can contact the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

7. How to contact us

If you have any questions about this notice, want to raise a concern with us, or want to exercise your privacy rights, the quickest and easiest way to do so is to get in touch with us using our online privacy form.

You can also write to us at:

The Privacy Team
Yahoo EMEA Limited
Floor 5-7 Point Square
North Wall Quay
Dublin 1
Ireland

If you want to contact our Data Protection Officer, you can email dpo-contact@yahooinc.com or write to:

The Data Protection Officer
Yahoo EMEA Limited
Floor 5-7 Point Square
North Wall Quay
Dublin 1
Ireland

UK residents can also contact our UK GDPR representative by emailing YahooUKGDPRrepresentative@mhcldn.com or writing to:

MHC U.K. GDPR Representative
Mason Hayes & Curran LLP
1 Cornhill, London, EC3V 3ND
United Kingdom