Yahoo knew of attacks before Google, kept mum

http://ca.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idCATRE60E5PQ20100116?sp=true

by briansmith • 17 years ago

45 27 17 years ago

ca.reuters.com

lucifer• 17 years ago

Confession time: I also knew of concerted Chinese attacks "before Google" and kept mum. For the past few years, day after day, countless phishing and spam kept arriving in my inbox with .cn URLs but I kept it to myself.

mahmud• 17 years ago

Yahoo just rolls over and takes it. The sad thing is, when China is a profitable enough market, and companies who sucked up to the regime are ready to capitalize on their presence there, Yahoo itself will not be around to reap the benefits.

nfnaaron• 17 years ago

Like probably most other companies doing business in China, and probably for years.

Not defending it, just pointing out that this one decision of Yahoo's is, unfortunately, normal.

DanielBMarkham• 17 years ago

For the reading impaired:

Analysts say many foreign multinationals in fact may occasionally bend over backwards to appease Beijing, coveting the vast potential market in what will soon be the world's second-largest economy.

Since Google reported the attacks, only Adobe Systems Inc, Juniper Networks Inc and Rackspace Hosting Inc have acknowledged experiencing similar incidents. But the majority of victims have remained silent.

DougBTX• 17 years ago

  "I don't understand how that helps anything. I don't 
   understand how that helps us and I don't understand
   how that helps China," Ballmer said.

With a quote like that, you have no idea what question Ballmer was asked, what exactly "that" refers to.

sjs• 17 years ago

The paragraph above that one is enough context, no? He was asked about pulling out of China.

    Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said Thursday the software giant
    had no plans to pull out of China. Microsoft is chiefly
    interested in getting Beijing to crack down on
    intellectual property rights, and has no desire to ruffle
    relations, analysts said.

nitrogen• 17 years ago

The paragraph above is not a quote of Ballmer. There is no actual context provided to say what Ballmer meant by "that," only what the reporter says Ballmer meant. Perhaps that is what the GP meant.

metatronscube• 17 years ago

Is Yahoo still around?

CamperBob• 17 years ago

I think they were bought by AltaVista...

jsm386• 17 years ago

Is that surprising given Yahoo's history with China? If your not familiar, the reporter waited until the closing paragraphs to put this in proper context:

In 2007, Yahoo outraged human rights activists after accusations that the Internet giant had handed over the mail, data on online activity and Internet addresses of suspected dissidents to Chinese officials. Though Yahoo eventually settled the lawsuits brought by lawyers acting on behalf of jailed dissidents.

The suit, advanced by the Washington D.C.-based World Organization for Human Rights USA, maintained that Yahoo had benefited financially by working with Chinese authorities.

Yahoo also no longer maintains its own Internet site in China. In 2005, Yahoo handed over exclusive rights to the "Yahoo China" brand name and folded its Chinese mail, messaging and other operations into the Alibaba Group, in a $1 billion deal that gave Yahoo a 40 percent stake in Alibaba.

briansmith• 17 years ago

In other words, Yahoo makes money in China indirectly so they can't be as easily blamed for their behavior.

freetard2• 17 years ago

And yet people still think of Google as more evil than Yahoo. Even when Yahoo has sent some bloggers to jail and now that.

cema3• 17 years ago

They do? I am surprised. In what circles?

freetard2• 17 years ago

You don't read the news or blogs? There's not a single day without an article questioning Google evilness when it comes to our data. I never see any about Yahoo.

sh1mmer2• 17 years ago

As someone who works at Yahoo I'm going to say I have no guilt over China. If you think China commits human rights violations stop doing business with them yourself. That means not buying anything made in China, including anything made by Apple.

The human rights abuses in China are sad, and upsetting. I'm a member of Amnesty and I care about stopping them. However, western business operating in China have an ability to change the market and increase the standard of living and the freedoms in that country through increased wealth and communication.

This story isn't (or shouldn't) be about Yahoo!'s operations in China it should be about co-operation between companies to prevent cyber-terrorism wherever it's from. I'd like to think next time we as a company are more forthcoming with information to others, so they have more notice of potential threats.

N.B These views are my own and don't necessarily represent Yahoo!'s views, yada, yada

antipaganda2• 17 years ago

Does it help China increase the standard of living when Yahoo gets human rights campaigners thrown in jail?

electromagnetic2• 17 years ago

That depends whether the instability brought by poking a corrupt regime is good or bad. On the one hand the human rights campaigners could improve democracy and help bring China into the modern world, whilst on the other hand promoting the faults of their corrupt regime could easily result in anarchy and martial law if there was ever an uprising. The major problem here is that an uprising would quickly cause the cost of production to go through the roof in China, forcing virtually every industry to pull out of the country and relocate elsewhere. This major export hit to the Chinese economy could collapse their entire system, and disregarding the international effects, it could easily land China in the situation of North Korea.

Honestly, with the fact that China could so easily result in a massive North Korea, how would that help the standard of living?

China isn't a simple situation and assigning childish ethics to the country will resolve nothing. The simple allowance of unions in China could easily result in another global recession. A college strike here in Ontario is threatening the provinces recovery as it may delay the graduation of all those getting retrained due to the financial crisis. Simply imagine what happened if unionization occurred throughout China and the ramifications for the countries trade.

China is going to require baby steps to bring it into a democratic and free world, anything faster could be an international economic disaster on the scale of the great depression.

sh1mmer2• 17 years ago

Would it have made a difference if the Chinese had subpoenaed anyone else, such as a Chinese company?

I assuming by your nick, I was going to get lampooned whatever.

The way I see it is simple, if China is that bad then put them under a trade embargo. The entire rest of the world should stop doing business with them. Why make it the responsibility of corporate company to make moral judgement on governments. Yahoo complied with a legal subpoena in China. That was a reasonable thing to do.

You should think about the legal requests that Yahoo, Google and every other company routinely comply with in America in the context of the Guantanamo bay facility and the PATRIOT act. Are those companies doing the world a service?

I know it easy, and apparently trendy, to throw stones at Yahoo over this but frankly that's a very simplistic and naive attitude.

I've met both the Yahoo founders and spent a fair amount of time with one of them. They are nice guys, they have done some awesome things for "human rights" while I've been at Yahoo, like their anti-Prop 8 contributions.

I'm not saying that every decision that a large corporation makes is good for society, fair, or even moral. But, I do think it's ridiculous to make companies moral arbiters when dealing off-shore.

And frankly, part of the point of my original post is everyone's hypocrisy. I would bet a $100 that everyone, without exception that has commented on this thread has at one time or another bought something from China (or elsewhere in the 3rd world) that was made by people treated inhumanely.

So even though you threw the first stone, I hope you think about if you can justify it.

My own opinions, not necessarily Yahoo!s position, etc, etc

dirtbox• 17 years ago

China has been all out attacking various networks both corporate and government all over the world since at least 2003 so it puzzles me why this is news to anyone. Google knew all about that at the time, but they only publicly lash out now when they're on the the receiving end? Seems rather self serving.

Especially considering Google is not even as popular as the Alibaba Group owned Yahoo in China, let alone the many Chinese search engines.

ahlatimer• 17 years ago

Correct me if I'm reading this wrong, but doesn't this just mean that Yahoo knew about the attacks before Google told them? Google could have been aware of the attacks well before they told Yahoo about it, and there's no indication (given the information in the body of the article) that Yahoo knew first (likewise, the inverse is true).

apower• 17 years ago

Look people, Google is not above anybody else. Google turned over information to the Indian government to throw some guy in jail for making some remark on a website about the government. Google is just as much against free speech and corroborating with governments against individual rights when it comes to making money. http://binaryday.com/2008/05/18/is-the-arrest-of-rahul-krish...

Yahoo knew of attacks before Google, kept mum

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