A Yahoo employee who is no longer working for the company has searched around 6000 accounts of users of the Internet service for sex images and videos. The programmer pleaded guilty to a US court on Monday.
According to the court, the 34-year-old had mainly targeted mail accounts for younger women. His victims also included friends and work colleagues. To get to the content, the man cracked passwords in internal Yahoo systems.
By having access to Yahoo accounts, the man was also able to search accounts at other sites such as Apple's iCloud, Facebook, Google's Gmail and other online services. This is possible, for example, if the Yahoo email address is specified as the authentication account for such services.
Pictures and videos saved on private computer
The former Yahoo employee had copied the pictures and videos and stored them on a private computer, it said. He destroyed it after Yahoo became aware of suspicious activity. The man pleaded guilty in a case of computer intrusion. He faces five years imprisonment. The punishment is to take place in February.
Security experts warn against sending sensitive content such as nude photos via webmail services. Many providers send messages unencrypted, in some cases, emails are also scanned for advertising purposes. Also in the course of support requests it can happen that employees get access to mail accounts.
