Yahoo went searching for something in particular when it reportedly scanned all of its users' emails on the orders of a US intelligence agency -- but what?
Yahoo was scanning for the digital "signature" of a terrorist group with ties to a foreign government, according to a report Wednesday from The New York Times that cited an unnamed government official. The company adapted systems it already had in place to scan for spam, malicious software and child pornography, the report continued.
Yahoo declined to comment further on Wednesday about the email scanning reports. The story first came to light Tuesday when Reuters reported the company had created tools to scan all user email in response to a government directive. Earlier on Wednesday, the company issued a statement calling the Reuters report "misleading."
"We narrowly interpret every government request for user data to minimize disclosure," the statement continued. "The mail scanning described in the article does not exist on our systems."
According to the source cited by the Times, the scan ordered by the US government on Yahoo's systems is no longer taking place. The order might have come from either the NSA or the FBI, according to Reuters' sources.
The FBI and the NSA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.