My sister has a free email at Yahoo. She thinks someone from Yahoo reads or monitors her email. What's the law? What's the extent?

I know the federal courts have determined that owners may monitor their email systems because they own the computers and software, but I am unsure about Yahoo.

I read their Terms of Service and found the following:

We respond to subpoenas, court orders, or legal process, or to establish or exercise our legal rights or defend against legal claims ;

We believe it is necessary to share information in order to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding illegal activities, suspected fraud, situations involving potential threats to the physical safety of any person, violations of Yahoo's terms of use, or as otherwise required by law.

Recently, there have been two issues in my city regarding email.

First: a man obtained the password to someone elses email account and was reading the other person's email. When caught, he was charge with invasion of privacy (after the woman provided he had no right to access it).

Second: my school district monitors all staff email in case inappropriate content is sent using the school's mail service. A teacher sued the district for reading very personal emails. The case was dismissed due to the school district owning the servers and acting on their right to know if their services were being used for legal or illegal activities.

I hope that gives you two good examples of how the law acts.

there's a dude arrested for 9 years for spamming emails...

:) they really take this seriuosly

In those two scenarios above there is ONE very distinctive difference. In Scenario 1) He "received" a password and read the persons mail
in 2) the School OWNS the servers.

The basic rule of thumb is, if Yahoo owns the server, Yahoo can read your mail.. Its likely they wont as Yahoo probably supports Millions of Email boxes and what would make her so Alluring.

Rule of thumb, If they own the server they have the right to see ANY data on it, including your email, if you dont have a valid reason (IE steal a password) its illegal.

Um yeah, I said that. I made sure to point those two key factors out. I gave two examples, one showing when it is and the other when it is not legal.

heh.. Sorry lack of sleep, guess I didnt read your whole post..

Do you think the Terms of Service clauses are what Yahoo uses to justify lawfully that they have the right to read Yahoo emails?

We respond to subpoenas, court orders, or legal process, or to establish or exercise our legal rights or defend against legal claims ;

We believe it is necessary to share information in order to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding illegal activities, suspected fraud, situations involving potential threats to the physical safety of any person, violations of Yahoo's terms of use, or as otherwise required by law.


Or is their federal law link that they are relying on?

Originally posted by Jakiao
my school district monitors all staff email in case inappropriate content is sent using the school's mail service. A teacher sued the district for reading very personal emails. The case was dismissed due to the school district owning the servers and acting on their right to know if their services were being used for legal or illegal activities.
Could you help me in locating a news link to this item? Or the name of the school district and teacher?

If I knew of any, I would. I was in eigth grade at the time. I'll poke around the school library on Monday to see if I can find any info on it.