Verizon-Yahoo deal piques privacy watchdogs’ concern
August 3, 2016
Verizon’s $4.8 billion bid to buy Yahoo’s internet properties is drawing scrutiny from Capitol Hill privacy hawks, who have long sought restrictions on how ISPs collect and use customer data, Tony and Alex report today. With Yahoo, Verizon is hoping to supercharge its advertising business, combining what it knows about its existing smartphone users with the information it can glean from the roughly 200 million monthly visitors to Yahoo’s stable of websites, including Tumblr, Yahoo Mail and Flickr. But Verizon’s ad ambitions — as it seeks to take on Google and Facebook — have left some lawmakers fearful that a new data-hungry behemoth is taking shape.
