Yahoo DENIES giving Iran names of 200,000 protesters

A ZDNet blogger claims that Yahoo! has been passing personal information about Iranian protesters to Iran's government. In the last few minutes, Yahoo! has denied the claim. In IT Blogwatch, bloggers wonder if it could possibly be true.

By Richi Jennings. October 9, 2009.
(YHOO)
 
[Update 10/9 1.50pm EDT: ZDNet editor Larry Dignan remarks: "Short of second and third sourcing, ZDNet must consider this report unreliable."]
 
[2nd update 10/12 1.55pm EDT: in a subsequent post, Dignan retracts, apologizes, and explains.] 
 
 
Richard Koman alleges some serious allegations, allegedly:

Yahoo collaborated with the Iranian regime during the election protests, providing to the authorities the names and emails of some 200,000 Iranian Yahoo users. ... My sources indicate the information comes from a group of resisters who have infiltrated the administration.
...
These sources say that Yahoo representatives met with Iranian Internet authorities after Google and Yahoo were shut down during the protests and agreed to provide the names of Yahoo subscribers who also have blogs in exchange for the government lifting the blocks on Yahoo. ... If true, this is a deeply troubling development and exposes Yahoo as determined to cooperate with repressive governments, regardless of who they might be. ... We’re working to get a comment from Yahoo.

The anonymous source provided this English translation:

On [18 September], when Iranians demonstrated again on the streets, the Iranian authorities ... blocked or severely limited access to Yahoo and Google. Google did not react and its problem was resolved with 48 hours, but Yahoo sent a representative to Iran’s telecommunications ministry, to resolve the issue.
...
The Yahoo representative agreed to provide ... e-mail accounts of those individuals who have Yahoo accounts and are publishing blogs ... within a matter of hours. Upon the receipt of such a list, which included approximately 200,000 e-mails, by the Iranian authorities, the regime immediately unblocked access to the Yahoo.com website. The list went back as far as five years and included active and inactive accounts and blogs.
...
Iranian Yahoo is managed by Yahoo Corporation in Malaysia.

Andrew Ford Lyons is incensed:

Yahoo! users in Iran should consider deleting their accounts. ... [We] recommend that anyone involved in political activism involving Iran consider how closely their Yahoo! ID is related to their actual identity and possibly delete their accounts now.
...
Furthermore, Anyone involved in any political reform in a country where harrassment, torture, imprisonment and death may want to think twice about using Yahoo! if it turns that this is how loose the company plays with your details.

Curt Monash is open-minded:

I'll leave it to the Farsi readers to judge the credibility of the root source. ... I know for an absolute fact that people at Yahoo are concerned about preserving privacy and so on. If this story is true it just shows that other people at Yahoo are not sufficiently concerned.

But Mark 'Rizzn' Hopkins thinks it doesn't pass the smell test:

Typically, when I find that a story is far too juicy to pass up, it’s generally too good to be true.
...
I’m willing to give Yahoo a pass on this – at least until the facts shake out or they have a chance to respond. The allegation that Yahoo was able to, within a couple of hours, filter out from their 20 million Iranian email users the 200,000 that use a blog is a little fishy (not impossible – but fairly unlikely). If this story holds any water at all, we’ll follow up with some further analysis, but as it stands, we’re highly suspicious.

Yahoo's anonymous Twitter-jockey simply tweets:

The ZDnet allegations are false. No Yahoo! representative met w/ any Iranian officials or disclosed user data to Iranian gov't.

 
And mattguitar gently weeps, unimpressed with ZDNet:

Very disturbing allegations, indeed. I know he probably wanted to break this story before anyone else, but I wish he had enough evidence.

The latest Cringely mocks ZDNet, thus:

Richard Koman at ZDnet published a blog post late last night that amply demonstrates nearly everything that's right and wrong about Web journalism.
...
That's an incredibly serious allegation, one I'd suspect a reputable newspaper would not have published without some kind of second- or third-party corroboration, as well as a response from Yahoo. But this is the blogosphere, where the normal rules no longer seem to apply.

At least Mark Schoenbaum finds something to joke about:

Meanwhile, seeking the first e-mail provider for the workers' paradise, Kim Jong Il enthusiastically watches Yahoo's latest moves.

So what's your take?
Get involved: leave a comment.
 

Richi Jennings is an independent analyst/consultant, specializing in blogging, email, and security. A cross-functional IT geek since 1985, he is also an analyst at Ferris Research. You can follow him as @richi on Twitter, or richij on FriendFeed, pretend to be richij's friend on Facebook, or just use good old email: itblogwatch@richij.com.

 
 
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