Remember Yahoo Messenger? The app with 'Y' & smiley icon continued to be one of your favorite one a few years ago. It's still alive and getting more secure; says Alex Stamos, Yahoo's Chief Information Security officer. Yahoo's laid out a plan to ensure that all the data that flows across its servers will be encrypted and won't be available to the spying eyes (read NSA). Even if the government taps data cables; it won't be able to read your messages. Yahoo's declared that as of March 31, Yahoo fully supports encryption and a new version of the Yahoo messenger will be launched in the next few weeks.


Yahoo's homepage will encrypt all the keywords entered by the user by default. The company's goal is to have everything that flows to and from the user to be encrypted. Yahoo's new rules apply to their partners as well. Several providers of advertisements to Yahoo mail, who failed to comply, have been shown the door.

Few days ago, CNET had discovered that Yahoo Messenger was delivering messages in unencrypted format. Yahoo's taken the expose seriously and has promised that they'll launch a more secure version of YM in coming weeks. The encryption will take care of video calls as well. The company has implemented TLS 1.2, Perfect Forward Secrecy and 2048-bit RSA key for most of the popular properties including Yahoo search engine, Yahoo Mail and Yahoo digital magazine sites.

Do you think the new Yahoo Messenger will attract its lost users?

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