Communication Products

This policy describes our current privacy practices for the Yahoo Communications brands, websites, features, products, apps, software and other services (“Communications Services”). All information collected, provided to Yahoo or stored in your Yahoo Account will be treated, used and protected in accordance with the Yahoo Privacy Policy. This information may change as Yahoo revises these Communications Services by adding or removing features or using different service providers. Some Communications Service features are only available if you are a registered user.

This page describes specific privacy practices with respect to Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Calendar, and Yahoo Assistants.

Information Collection and Use Practices - General

  • Yahoo’s systems may analyze and store all communications content, including email content from incoming and outgoing mail, as well as incoming and outgoing messages to messaging apps.
  • We also may analyze and store all other content and other information you provide when you use our Communications Services. This can include information within or about the content you provide, such as photos, attachments and other communications.
  • Our systems may analyze all communications content (such as Mail, Groups, Calendar, Address and Messenger content including instant messages and SMS messages) for the purposes outlined in our main Privacy Policy page. If you provide Yahoo access to your Gmail data, please click here for more information on how we treat your Gmail data.
  • This analysis may occur on all communications content as it is sent, received, and when it is stored, including content from services synced with your account. For example, in certain use cases, we run automated algorithms on commercial communications to create generic templates of such documents (e.g., using common language to identify the elements of an airline receipt). These templates do not include the recipient’s personal data. Yahoo employees may review the templates to improve our services and our personalization of your experience. We may also manually review certain communications to improve our masking template capabilities, develop tools to assist the automated scanning process, improve segmentation and other automated functions and create generic templates of such documents (e.g., using common language to identify the elements of an airline receipt). Our anti-spam team may review messages flagged as “spam” or “not spam” to improve our anti-spam defenses.
  • Our Communications Service may include interactive features from third-parties as well. We do not share information that personally identifies you (such as information like your first and last name or email address) with third-parties without your consent.
  • This information may also be used for interest-based advertising. To learn more about what choices you have, you can visit Why This Ad.
  • Please read the FAQ to learn more about our Communications Services.

Communication Features

  • Users with whom you communicate may opt to save your conversations even if you delete them.
  • If you have SMS message forwarding enabled, these messages may be stored in your conversation history on that device.
  • We may store the contacts and calendar details from Communications Services like Mail, Address Book, Messenger Contacts, Groups, and when you synchronize data from your devices (for example, your phone contacts).
    • Synced contacts from third-party services may re-populate after you delete them unless you disable the syncing feature.

Sharing and Disclosure to Third-Parties

  • Connecting your account to a third-party service may require that you share information with that third party (for example, your email address). You can view and disable third-party account links by visiting the accounts section in the Communications Service(s) you may use.
  • Certain information from your account may be visible to others such as your name, nickname, avatar, image, gender, city, online status, contact information associated with your Yahoo account or other information that you have chosen to make public.
  • If you post information online that is accessible to the public, you may receive unsolicited messages from other parties in return.
  • Your messages are shared only with the people you want. Yahoo may anonymously share specific objects from a message (such as keywords, package tracking and product price, name, identification and other data) with third-parties in order to enhance your user experience, develop new services and features and provide targeted ads.

Comments

  • When signed into the Yahoo Network you may comment on articles or other content. When you comment, your profile is linked to that content and your display name and profile photo are visible to other users.
  • You must be a logged-in, registered user to post a comment.
  • Comments you post will be displayed publicly along with your Yahoo ID or chosen nickname and profile picture or avatar.
  • You may also delete a comment you have posted by selecting the ‘delete’ option next to the comment you wish to remove.
  • Your comments are visible to you on the “My Comments” tab next to the commenting streams.

Yahoo Mail

Premium Services

  • Premium services, such as Mail Plus, are available for a fee.
  • When you sign up for premium services, you will be asked to enter your credit card information. Yahoo takes your security seriously. We use industry-standard SSL (Secure Socket Layer) to encrypt the transmission of your credit card and other information used when ordering premium services.

Information Collection and Use Practices

  • Yahoo Mail includes IP addresses in outgoing mail message headers, as specified by standard Internet protocol.
  • Yahoo may share certain analyzed elements of your communications, such as keywords, package tracking and product identification numbers, with third-parties in order to enhance your user experience and personalize your ads and content.
  • Our automated systems analyze content in part, to provide personally relevant, enriched experiences within mail.  Enriched experiences show easy-to-read cards or similar formats within your inbox.
    Some of these enriched experiences may include links, partnerships, or revenue sharing agreements where Yahoo receives compensation when you complete a purchase or take an action. 
  • When users click on the Spam and Not Spam buttons, information is sent to our anti-spam team or other spam compliance service providers for manual review, and aspects of these messages may be shared with the sender to reduce spam.

Practices Regarding Your Ability to Update or Delete Information

  • You can modify your settings and preferences in your Yahoo Mail account by accessing “Account Information”.

Yahoo Calendar

Information Collection and Use Practices

  • When you store appointments on Yahoo Calendar, you can enter information about the appointment, including a description, date, time, or whether the event is recurring or one-time only.

Information Sharing and Disclosure Practices

  • You can elect to make your Yahoo Calendar publicly viewable, viewable to a selected set of other users, or private (non-viewable).
  • If you allow others to view your calendar, you can choose whether each appointment is hidden, appears as "Busy," or appears with all details. You can modify the default event permission setting from the "Options" page of Yahoo Calendar. Your event permission setting change will apply to any events that you add after you have made the setting change, but will not change the setting of events that you have added previous to the change. You can also modify the permission of each event individually from the edit page for that event.

Yahoo Assistants

Information Collection and Use Practices

  • Yahoo Assistants are a new category of products and services using artificial intelligence guided by humans. These include chat bots operating in messenger platforms, virtual personal assistants and stand-alone apps accessed on Yahoo or through third-party apps and services. Assistants may collect information about you in a manner different from other search technologies.
  • Yahoo Assistants may interact and converse with you to answer questions, help complete tasks or perform other activities. Assistants rely on our personnel and automated systems to respond to questions or instructions from users.
  • We may collect information about you when you use our Assistants, including your conversations and interactions with the Assistant, your Yahoo ID and information associated with your account.
  • We may also collect information provided by a third-party (including apps, messaging platforms and other services) interacting with our Assistants, which could include: your account information with the third-party, such as user ID, name, photo, phone number, email address; and device information such as device ID, device type, operating system, and mobile carrier.
  • Yahoo’s personnel and our automated systems may have access to all communications content as it is sent, received, and when it is stored, in order to fulfill your requests, further product and services development, and provide personalized experiences and advertising through Yahoo’s products and services.
  • When you are communicating with our Assistants through a third-party, please read that company’s privacy policy to better understand what information it may retain and for what purposes.
  • Location information collected through the Yahoo Assistants may not appear in the Location Management page.