Communications products

This is an old version of "Communications products". View the latest version here.

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

This page describes specific privacy practices with respect to Yahoo Address Book, Yahoo Calendar, Yahoo Groups, Yahoo Mail, AOL Mail, Yahoo Messenger or other instant messaging services and Yahoo Notepad. 

Information collection and use practices 

  • EU/EEA user note: If you are a user based in the EU/EEA, your consent is required for our data collection and analysis of your Communications Services for purposes other than product functionality and security and fraud prevention. The purposes for which data may be collected from your use of the Communications Services can also be managed through your privacy control settings. Subject to your consent and your privacy control selections, your data is collected and analysed in accordance with our policies set out below

General

  • Verizon Media’s systems analyse and store all communications content, including email content from incoming and outgoing email, as well as incoming and outgoing messages to messaging apps. 
  • We also analyse and store all other content and 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 analyse all communications content (such as Mail, Groups, Calendar, Address and Messenger content including instant messages) for product functionality purposes including in-product search, as well as for fraud prevention, security and anti-spam purposes. We also analyse communications content to provide you with enhanced personalised advertising (except in BT | Yahoo) and to improve our product services. If you provide Verizon Media access to your Gmail data, please click here for more information on how we treat your Gmail data.
  • This analysis occurs on all communications content as it is sent, received and when it is stored, including content from services synced with your account. For example, after automatically attempting to remove any information that on its own could reasonably identify the recipient, we may manually review certain communications to improve our product capabilities, develop tools to assist our automated scanning process and improve other automated functions. For example, identifying commonly used language in an airline receipt to create generic templates that better assist your email management, our services and our personalisation of your experience. Our anti-spam team may review messages flagged as ‘spam’ or ‘not spam’ to improve our anti-spam defences. See Help for more information.
  • Our Communications Services may include interactive features from third parties, such as cloud storage services (for example, sending large attachments to your contacts) and intelligent folder agents (for example, moving all of your receipts automatically to specific folders or providing reports on your spending).        
  • Please read the Communication Services FAQs 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 store the contacts and calendar details from Communications Services such as Mail, Address Book, Messenger Contacts, Groups, and when you synchronise data from your devices (for example, your phone contacts).
    • Synced contacts from third-party services may repopulate once you’ve deleted them unless you disable the syncing feature.

Sharing and disclosure to third parties 

  • Connecting your account to a third-party service may require you to 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 Verizon Media 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.

Yahoo Mail

 Premium services

  • Certain premium services are available for a fee.
  • When you sign up for premium services, you will be asked to provide your payment information. We will use this information for billing and payment purposes in order to provide you with the premium services. Verizon Media takes your security seriously. We use industry-standard SSL (Secure Socket Layer) to encrypt the transmission of your payment information and other information used when ordering premium services.

Billing

  • To view, edit or cancel Yahoo premium services you have ordered, please visit Yahoo Premium Services account information. It includes information about services you currently subscribe to, payment scheduling and payment history.
  • Information collection and use practices
  • Yahoo Mail includes IP addresses in outgoing mail message headers, as specified by standard Internet protocol.
  • This information may also be used for interest-based advertising. To learn more, you can visit Yahoo’s control tool for interest-based advertising.
  • Verizon Media may share keywords, package tracking and product identification numbers with third parties in order to enhance your user experience and provide targeted ads.
  • 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 as much or as little information about the appointment as you wish, including a description, date, time, invitees, location or whether the event is recurring or one-off 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 prior to the change. You can also modify the permission of each event individually from the edit page for that event.

Yahoo Messenger

Information Collection & Use Practices

  • We collect information about you when you use Yahoo Messenger. We collect information from you directly, such as your phone number, email address, photos and, with your consent, device contacts. We also collect information from you automatically when you use Yahoo Messenger, such as your IP address, location, analytics on app usage, device ID and type, and mobile carrier.
  • When using Yahoo Messenger, your communications content is stored on our servers, providing you with a means of searching for the content you want through our platforms.

Information Sharing & Disclosure Practices

  • Certain products may include features that notify other users that you are present or active in a channel, team or group.  
  • When you communicate using Yahoo Messenger, we facilitate sharing communications with your friends. To make it easier for you to locate and communicate with other Yahoo Messenger users, we may, with your consent, synchronise data from your devices. Other users who have your phone number or email address may be able to discover you on Yahoo Messenger and see certain information such as your name, nickname, avatar, image, online status, contact information associated with your Verizon Media account or other information that you have chosen to make public.
  • You can invite your friends to join Yahoo Messenger, and one-to-one and group conversations. Invitations may include message content, such as your name and photos.

Unsending messages, photos & GIFs

  • In some cases, you can unsend communications content. We may retain copies of the communications and logs for audit and record purposes, or as required by law. For more information, please see the Verizon Media Privacy Policy (’Information Security and Data Retention’).
  • There are some exceptions to the unsend feature, for example:
    • Users who receive your messages, or any other content, can save or copy them, including taking a screenshot or by using some other image-capturing methods or technology. Also, if users save or copy content (including photos) before it is unsent, they may be able to access and share that content later.
    • Push notifications of new messages aren’t taken back, so users may be able to read notification snippets of unsent messages.
    • A message cannot be unsent if a friend is still using a prior version of Yahoo Messenger or goes offline before you can unsend.
  • Think before you share! Messages are sent immediately. There’s no guarantee that the recipients won’t see the message before you unsend it.

Other

  • By using Yahoo Messenger, you acknowledge that other users of Yahoo Messenger may elect to receive a notification from Yahoo Messenger when you sign in, and may send you instant messages and other information, or call you via Yahoo Messenger. If you wish to block the notification feature or if you don’t want to receive messages from such users, you may have the option to enable the ‘Ignore’ or similar feature separately. Your ability to send and receive instant messages and other information may be blocked by Verizon Media and other users, which may partially or wholly limit your ability to use Yahoo Messenger. Verizon Media has no responsibility for assessing or resolving any disputes arising from your or any other user’s ability (or otherwise) to ignore, send messages or other information, or otherwise use Yahoo Messenger. 
  • Some features available in Yahoo Messenger, such as the ‘like’ and unsend features, may not function when communicating with friends using prior versions of Yahoo Messenger (versions released prior to 3 December 2015).

Yahoo Groups

Information Sharing and Disclosure Practices

  • Messages you email to the group or that you post through the website for a Group will always include your email address.
    • Full headers of all email postings can be seen by anyone accessing the messages through the website.
  • Your full email address will be visible to the owner and moderator(s) of any group to which you belong.
    • However, some group owners may choose to give members the option to not allow their email addresses to be visible to the owner and moderators. Choosing this option may limit your ability to post and take advantage of other features of the group.
  • By using Yahoo Groups and its various tools, you may make some of your information public. You may also choose to share some of your information with other group members.
  • When you share files, post messages, create polls or add bookmarks to a group to which you belong, certain information such as your name, nickname, avatar, image, online status, contact information associated with your Verizon Media account or other information that you have chosen to make public may appear next to the file, message, poll or bookmark on the Groups website.
  • The personal email addresses of group owners and moderators who invite members to join the group via the ‘invite’ tool are visible to the recipients of an invitation.
  • Certain information from your profile may be visible to others such as your name, gender, city, online status and 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.

Practices Regarding Your Ability to Update or Delete Information

  • If you are a group owner, you can edit or delete any posting or member in your group. You can also completely delete your group at any time. Group owners can also grant moderators the ability to edit or delete postings and members from the group.
  • As a group member, you can edit your group memberships and preferences at any time. You can also delete your own messages from a group.