COMPANY PROFILE

Yahoo

Headquarters: New York, United States · Founded: 1994

4 fines or sanctions2 data breaches

What it does and how it makes money

Yahoo is a web portal with search, email (Yahoo Mail), news, finance and sports, and it sells advertising (Yahoo Native, Yahoo Ad Tech). It is 90% owned by Apollo Global Management and 10% by Verizon.

It makes money from advertising, including targeted ads on its services and its Yahoo Ad Tech advertising platform. ^[1]

What data it collects about you

According to its privacy policy, it collects account data, device data (such as IP address and cookies), location, content you post or send (including emails) and data from partners and third parties. Among other uses, it serves targeted ads based on your activity, inferred interests and location. ^[2]

How it turns your data into money

According to its privacy policy, Yahoo collects information from your devices (computers, mobile phones, tablets), your location from a variety of sources, your searches, what you view and read, and the sites or apps you used before accessing its services and where you went next. It also analyzes email content to create advertising interest profiles and personalize the ads it shows you. With this it serves targeted advertising based on your device activity, inferred interests and location, and tells advertisers how their ads performed; it shares aggregated or pseudonymous information with publishers and advertisers, not your phone number or email. Example: if your Yahoo Mail receives purchase confirmations for running shoes, Yahoo can infer that interest and show you footwear ads on its sites and partners' sites. The money comes from selling those ads and from its Yahoo DSP platform, through which advertisers buy ad space in auctions. ^[2]

Where it is incorporated

Yahoo Inc. is a Delaware (US) corporation headquartered in Manhattan, New York. Since September 1, 2021 it has been 90% owned by funds managed by Apollo Global Management, with Verizon retaining the remaining 10%. It was previously named Oath Inc. (2017–2019) and Verizon Media (2019–2021). ^[3]

Taxes and low-tax countries

In 2014 Yahoo moved its main European tax base from Switzerland to Ireland: from November 2013 European advertisers contract with Yahoo! EMEA Ltd, an Irish-registered company (12.5% corporate tax rate); Yahoo said the move reflected a streamlining of its European operations rather than tax motives. The same year it shifted control of its Australian operations from an Irish subsidiary with no employees (Overture Search Marketing Asia) to Yahoo Netherlands BV, described by The Irish Times as a key cog in its global tax structure. Its current privacy policy places the Data Protection Officer at Yahoo International Limited in Dublin. ^[4]

Competition and monopoly

On November 5, 2008 the US Department of Justice announced that Google and Yahoo had abandoned their search-advertising agreement after the DOJ told them it would file an antitrust lawsuit to block it: the DOJ concluded the deal would likely harm competition in the Internet search advertising and search syndication markets, where the two companies had combined shares of 90% and 95% respectively. ^[5]

Fines and sanctions

In total: 10 million EUR + 40.0 million USD + 250,000 GBP

CNIL · France · December 29, 202310 million EUR
Fine on Yahoo EMEA for placing about 20 advertising cookies without consent on yahoo.com and for telling Yahoo Mail users they would lose access if they withdrew consent, which meant consent could not be freely withdrawn. Appealed; France's Council of State rejected the appeal and upheld the fine in October 2025. ^[6]
New York State Attorney General · United States · December 4, 20185.0 million USD
Settlement with the New York Attorney General for violating the COPPA children's privacy law: its (AOL) ad systems served ads that collected data through cookies and location on sites aimed at children under 13. The company was Oath Inc., then the parent of Yahoo and AOL and now Yahoo Inc. ^[7]
ICO · United Kingdom · June 12, 2018250,000 GBP
Fine on Yahoo! UK Services Ltd for failing to protect the data of 515,121 UK accounts affected by the November 2014 attack. ^[8]
SEC · United States · April 24, 201835 million USD
Settlement with the SEC: Altaba Inc. (formerly Yahoo! Inc.) paid for failing to tell investors for two years about the December 2014 theft of account data (usernames, emails, phone numbers, birthdates, encrypted passwords and security questions). ^[9]

Data breaches and hacks

October 20173,000,000,000 people affected
Yahoo confirmed that the 2013 theft affected all 3 billion of its accounts (it had earlier said over 1 billion): names, emails, phone numbers, birthdates and security questions. Yahoo said bank and card data were not affected. ^[10]
September 2016500,000,000 people affected
Yahoo disclosed the theft of data from 500 million accounts, which took place in 2014. ^[10]

Ask it to delete your data

This is the page the company itself gives to ask it to delete your data or stop selling it: Open its page ^[11]

With GUARDIANA or GUARDIANA ZERO, you download from this same profile the letter asking it to delete your data, under your country’s law, ready to attach to an email.

Its website

https://www.yahoo.com/

Does this company follow you? GUARDIANA ZERO, GUARDIANA’s browser, cuts its connections and shows you how many times it tried. Meet GUARDIANA ZERO →

Sources

What this profile does NOT say

It does not say this company does anything illegal. The only thing it states about anyone’s legality is what a regulator or a court has already decided, with the date and the link to the source.
It does not say what data of yours it holds: only the company knows, which is why you have the right to ask it.
If you are this company and a fact is wrong, write to hola@guardianagroup.com and it will be corrected, with its date.

Public facts with their sources, checked on October 12, 2026. All profiles →