Yahoo follows Google in email privacy issue

Can big email providers scan your messages in order to serve you relevant advertising? Google and Yahoo have long assumed the answer is yes, which is one of the reasons the giant companies provide free email to millions of people.

Last week, however, a federal judge in California refused to throw out a class action case against Google, ruling that people who swapped messages with Gmail users — but do not use Gmail themselves — had never given the search giant permission to read their email.